


He's a candle (burning in my room)

by only_more_love



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Blow Jobs, Body Image, Comfort, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Feelings: men have them too, Frottage, Intimacy, Kink Negotiation, Light Angst, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, POV Tony Stark, Post-Coital, Sharing Clothes, Talking, mentions of past suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2019-08-01 03:48:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16277231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_more_love/pseuds/only_more_love
Summary: It's just sex, isn't it?(Some talking + a lot of feelings + a smidgen of smut = this fic.)





	1. you don’t have to run; you don’t have to go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’ve enjoyed any part of this story, please consider reblogging [this post on tumblr](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/post/186406062728/hes-a-candle-burning-in-my-room-complete). That will help more people find the story. Thanks for considering.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading; feedback, kudos, etc. are always welcome. Also, I can't decide if this is finished or not. I'm waffling between leaving it as a one-shot or adding one more part. Any thoughts? I'd love to hear them. 
> 
> You can also find me at [tumblr](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com). :) I’ve a Stony playlist on Spotify here. Send me some song suggestions if you like.
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> This author replies to comments.
> 
> Please note: 
> 
> If you don’t want a reply from me, for ANY reason, please feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond. :)

**A/N:** So before you read this, you should know that while I tried to write this for Kinktober, as it stands right now, this is not remotely kinky. Or smutty. (Sigh.) I need an _I Failed at Kinktober_ shirt.

Also, this isn't AoU or Civil War compliant because even though I failed spectacularly, I was still just trying to write smut. (Maybe one day I'll write a story to fix the hot mess that is Captain America: Civil War, but not today, Satan.) Last thing, I swear: the fic title's borrowed and tweaked from[ U2's _Desire_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8rQ575DWD8).

* * *

_  
“It’s just sex. You scratch my itch; I’ll...nibble on that gorgeous, star-spangled booty of yours. Oooh, Cap, just how far down’s that pretty blush go—?”_

_“Don’t call me that.”_

_“What? Cap? Why the hell not? You are him; he is you, Captain, my captain.”_  
  
_“Call me that again and I’m leaving.”_

_“OK, big guy. Let’s not be so hasty. Will you just tell me why?”_

_“In here, I don’t want to be...him. I don’t want to be Captain America. That’s not who I am, Tony. He’s just a, a, a, uniform I wear. A job I do. A job I_ **_want_ ** _to do. But still a job. Not me. Does that make sense?”_

 _“Yeah, it does. I understand, OK? Didn’t mean to upset you. So who_ **_do_ ** _you want to be in here?”_

_“Steve. Just Steve.”_

_“Hi, Steve. I’m Tony, and I’d like to kiss you. Is that OK?”_

_“That was pretty awful, Stark. But yeah, that’s—”_

_“I’m saving all my best lines as back-up, Rogers.”_

_“—more than OK.”_

_“Then get over here already.”  
_  

* * *

   
They haven’t been doing it, this, each other, for very long. It’s, um, a recent development.

(A couple weeks, tops. OK, fine, three weeks and two days. Tony knows exactly how long it’s been, and yes, it’s, it’s embarrassing, frankly, is what it is. But Steve doesn’t know he knows, so that’s just going to have to be enough.)

And never in Steve’s room. This—sex in Steve’s room—had been a first. Tony shivers, thinking. The idea that the next time Steve sleeps in his bed, he might smell Tony on his sheets, or at least remember they’d laid there, the two of them, breath synchronized and palms and fingers tangled together like vines while Tony curled in Steve’s lap and split himself on Steve’s cock, rocking, rocking, rocking...

_It’s just sex._

The city drips through the slitted window to the right of the bed. They’re both city boys, but of course, Steve _would_ leave his bedroom window open. He probably believes in the value of fresh air—such as it is—even in New York. Or something.

Far below, car horns bleat, their mechanical bluster dulled by the hushed-thrum _pat pat pat_ of cleansing rain. Cool afternoon air washes over Tony’s body, a soothing counterpoint to the heat that so recently simmered there.  
  
He sighs. Shifts on the pillow, and throws an arm, careless, over his eyes. He feels...relaxed. Inhabiting his body but also not trapped in it. Warm and fucked out. Loose-limbed and vaguely floaty. Like a helium balloon that’s come untethered and drifted off into the sky, held aloft on an easy breeze, wandering further and further, headed for an unknown destination, until it’s nothing but a pinprick on a distant horizon.

A potent mix of sweat and come cover his stomach and chest; if he doesn’t clean up soon, it’ll dry and start to pull unpleasantly. Still, Tony can’t muster the energy to care—or do anything at all about it. Oh well.

Several heartbeats after that thought appears, Tony’s awareness rolls back to Steve, or rather Steve and his tongue. They lick a wide ribbon through the mess on Tony’s front. “Don’t even try to tell me that tastes good, apple pie,” Tony says, sliding his arm from over his eyes and tucking it under his head, so he can watch Steve. Sure, Steve might not want Tony to call him any variation of Cap; he never said anything about all the non-captain-y nicknames that tumble out of Tony’s mouth with disturbing ease, though. He probably wouldn’t be able to stop those even if Steve wanted him to. Tony quirks an eyebrow. “We both know it doesn’t.”

“Nah.” Steve shakes his head. “Good might be a stretch,” he replies, deadpan, but a definite twinkle gleams in those ocean eyes. “It’s not like a chocolate shake or anything.”

“Oh, you think?” Tony rolls his eyes, amused in spite of himself.

“Tastes bitter.” Steve drags his index finger through the wetness and lifts it to his mouth, sucks it in with a tiny _pop_ , which, hmmm, if refractory periods weren’t an issue for non-super-soldier men, Tony’s dick would find pretty interesting. “Maybe a little salty.” A cute crinkle forms between Steve’s eyebrows, his expression thoughtful and considering. “But that’s OK. Cause it came from you, and I like you.”

Oh. _Oh. I like you._ Tony rolls the words around in his head, tasting them. Steve just says stuff like that sometimes, sincere and real, and it never fails to leave Tony a little stunned, a little breathless, and a lot charmed. Steve often catches him off-guard with his straightforward words. Tony’s used to people who wield words like weapons or bait—sometimes both—because they want things from him. Things like money, tech, or influence. But not  _him_. Not really. He’s not entirely sure he can even blame anyone for that. Steve, though, Steve usually means what he says; Tony believes that even if he isn’t naive enough to think Steve says everything that ticks through his mind. The man does still have a filter.

Several beats. Then: “I like you, too, sunshine.” Tony’s voice is supposed to sound light, steady, slightly teasing. But it doesn’t; it comes out surprisingly rough. The endearment wasn’t supposed to be there, but when it comes to Steve, Tony’s a weak, weak man.

Clearing his throat, Tony brushes his knuckles over the front of Steve’s shoulder and watches his lips part and his eyes slip shut. In the next moment, they blink open, and a smile flirts with the edges of Steve’s mouth as he moves. One hand planted firmly on the bed by Tony’s shoulder, Steve uses the other to raise a wet cloth and smooth it down the center of Tony’s body, through the sticky mess and the skein of scars on his chest, his expression calm and matter of fact. Tony knows this because he can’t bring himself to stop staring at Steve’s face.

Though Tony’s breath catches when Steve dabs the cloth on his arc reactor, his body stiffening involuntarily, Steve’s touch gentles noticeably there; Tony exhales and doesn’t pull away. From there Steve swipes down his stomach, making Tony wiggle and smile just a little at the ticklish sensation, and moves slow, so slow, and so careful, over his softened, spent cock, his balls, and his hole, where Tony had held Steve inside him not long ago. He still feels him there.

Steve’s strong. Tony’s seen him throw cars like they weighed the same as a child’s ball. All that leashed strength makes Tony breath come faster, but Steve’s hands on him have never been anything but unfailingly gentle.

Tony pulls himself to sitting and lets his back kiss the cool wood of the headboard.

He glances down and notices how the change in position makes his stomach pooch out. Not a lot, thankfully, but enough that his ego pings sharply. Vanity hisses in his ear and convinces him he should suck in his gut. Steve leans over and drops the cloth on the nightstand before he settles close to Tony again and pinches an inch or fine, _maybe_ an inch and a half of skin and fat around Tony’s belly button, then moves to poke his belly outright, wiggling his fingers until Tony squeaks. “Stop that,” he says, trying to sound indignant and not embarrassed, despite the definite flare of heat in his cheeks, “I work out, but I’m not twenty anymore. And anyway, not all of us have sixteen packs, Mr. _My Abs Have Little Baby Abs_.”

“You don’t need to do that with me. Stop sucking in your stomach.”

Whoa. That right there’s Steve’s command voice, and that’s his _don’t you fuck with me, Mr._ frown; he recognizes both because he’s intimately familiar with them, and as usual, they make Tony’s skin itch somewhere he can’t scratch, awakening duel and conflicting impulses in him: 1) To obey. Like, yesterday. 2) To stick out his tongue and do whatever Steve just told him not to do.

With a small shrug, Tony slouches back, and after a deep breath, lets his stomach relax. Whatever. He knows a lost cause when he sees it.

“That’s much better,” Steve murmurs, warm and approving, and something inside Tony that had gone taut and tense when Steve pinched his belly fat, loosens. Just a touch. It’s hard not to; when Steve sounds like that, Tony wants nothing more than to wrap himself in his velvet voice and roll around in it.

Steve cups his palm to Tony’s stomach, concentrated heat, long, elegant fingers spread wide over the trail of hair that begins below his navel, and it feels so good that Tony makes a small, helpless sound in the back of his throat. He draws closer and closer still, until the smooth, hot skin of his cheek is pressed to Tony’s, his lips a revelation next to Tony’s ear. “I think,” Steve says, drawing a full-body shiver from Tony, “I think you’re beautiful, Tony.”

Tony ducks his head. “Come on, Steve.” He’s not fishing for compliments. He has a realistic sense of his own appearance; does his best to work with what he’s got. He’s not hideous, no, of course, he knows that. Good hair, thankfully, but on the short side for a man, and between the avenging and the gym, he’s in decent shape. But beautiful? Yeah, that’s not a word he associates with himself.

“No.” Steve sits back on his heels and peers into Tony’s face, tips his chin up with a single finger, so Tony has no choice but to look back. His quiet regard leaves Tony the tiniest bit unnerved because while he's used to people staring at him, it's an entirely new and different thing to feel like he's actually being seen.

“Listen to me. You use your hands”—Steve traces his thumbs along the veins on the backs of Tony’s hands, then turns them both over and shapes kisses on the sensitive skin of his palms, and god, it _does_ things to Tony—“to create amazing things. And that brain of yours is absolutely gorgeous. The things you imagine. The things you make. Your whole body, you use it to, to protect people. Why _wouldn’t_ I think you’re beautiful?”

_It’s just sex._

Tony blinks rapidly. Oh, this man is so fucking earnest and honest it kills him. “Why _would_ you?” he blurts out, a question for a question, not really thinking before he speaks. “That’s the real question. I’m just a big man in a suit of armor, right?” Tony says, without much bite, throwing Steve’s old words back at him without understanding exactly why. Story of his life, ha ha ha.

(Maybe because Steve’s pressing on something tender, the echoes of a bruise that should have faded already.

Why can’t he just be normal? Why does his mouth qualify as a loaded weapon?

_This is why we can’t have nice things, Anthony._

And it’s his old man’s voice in his head and well, doesn’t that just fucking suck?

Maybe because throwing a verbal punch feels easier than acknowledging how much he wants to believe Steve right now.)

Steve inhales sharply, Tony’s hands falling from his grasp, and oh, Tony did that; it’s his fault for making a big deal about a dumb, offhand comment from a long time ago. People say stupid shit, himself more than most. Instantly, he misses Steve’s warmth. “Oh,” says Steve, and his lips draw tight and thin. “Been carrying that around for a while, huh?” and there’s hurt, or maybe regret, Tony can’t quite tell which, threaded through his words and coiled in the planes of his face.

For once, Tony has nothing to say, so he just makes a noncommittal noise, shrugs, and shrinks against the headboard, tucking his arms in front of his chest and looking across the room at the bookshelf filled with Steve’s books. Looking anywhere but at Steve.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve finally says.

_It’s just sex._

“Don’t worry about it.” He flaps his hand in a careless gesture, waving away Steve’s apology. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” Tony quips, and there is something quiet and unaccountably sad in Steve’s eyes as they look at each other. Its claws hook in the tender flesh of Tony’s belly and tug, hard.

“Don’t lie to me.” Tony lets his glance slide away, but Steve leans in, chases it until Tony’s ensnared once again. "You think I don’t know words can hurt? Before the serum, I was maybe 5’7” on a good day. About a hundred pounds. A little guy. As if that wasn’t enough, I was always sick. If it wasn’t my heart it was my lungs. Or my ears. I was always tired. Always poor.”

None of this is news to Tony, since he’s read all of Steve’s files and had learned everything about him from his father when he was a kid. But somehow, hearing the words from Steve’s mouth, sitting in his bed and watching the old pain creep across his face in the warm glow of the lamplight, it’s different. Harder than he might’ve expected it to be if he’d ever thought about it, which he hasn’t. It just is.

Steve sits back, legs crisscrossed, and his chest expands on a big exhale, contracts on a sigh. “People were cruel. They still are; that’s one thing that isn’t different here in the future, Tony. They said― They said...things. To me. About me. I’d tell myself it didn’t matter, but we both know that’s not true.”

Steve’s right; Tony does know. His hands fist, nails biting into his palms at the thought of the casual cruelty Steve endured. He wants to hit something―wants to hit someone―on Steve’s behalf.

“I’m sorry I did that to you, Tony. It was wrong.”

“Thanks,” says Tony, and lets that sit and breathe in the space between him and Steve.

“You ever said something you didn’t mean? Or maybe you meant it at the time, but it turned out you were wrong?”

Tony shoots Steve an incredulous look, eyes wide. “Uh, yeah. Hello, have you even met me?”

“Everything special about me came out of a bottle,” Steve murmurs, parroting Tony’s words from what feels like a lifetime ago. Steve’s head tilts to the side, and his lips twist in a smile that’s small, maybe a little broken, but utterly without malice. It stings, though, bright and sharp as a paper cut.

Tony winces. “See what I mean?” He scrubs hard at his hair. Pulls until it hurts. “I’m a dick, Steve. Everybody knows this.” He reaches a hand toward Steve but lets it drop to the bed with a _thump_ , the sound harsh in the quiet room. Face downcast, he watches his own useless hand pluck at the sheets. “What I said back then, it was stupid—and a lie. You are special, and, and, and… GAH! Why can’t I just say this?”

 _Big man in a suit of armor? Ha. More like little man with_ **_no_ ** _armor—zip, zero, zilch—and tons of soft, squishy, vulnerable bits._ He hates it. So much.

“Tony, it’s OK.”

“No, it’s not. Just— Shut up and let me finish.” Grimacing, Tony cracks his knuckles. “I’m sorry, too. You are special,” Tony says, hushed, and to his complete and total mortification, his voice cracks. _To me_ , he thinks but doesn’t say, rubbing at the dull ache in his chest with the heel of his hand. _Somebody please just kill me now._ But he flew a nuke into space once; maybe he can be a little brave if he absolutely has to be. Breathing’s hard, and his face, god, his face feels like a five-alarm fire, but— “It has nothing to do with the serum and everything to do with who you are and I know who you are.” The words tumble out at high speed, clunky and graceless. But he says them; he means them. “I know who you are.” If will can make a thing so, maybe Steve even believes him.

Luckily, Steve doesn’t seem to expect more than that. For that morsel of grace, Tony’s thankful. Steve doesn’t push him to say anything else. Which is good because Tony’s got nothing else. His throat’s dry and tight.

Steve merely nods, eyes kind and soft, and unfolds his naked body, which _is_ a beautiful collection of lines, curves, angles, and dark-smudge shadowed hollows, moving down the bed, pushing the rumpled blue sheets out of his way as he goes, with no hesitation, only an assured grace that goes straight to Tony’s head―and his battered heart. When he gets where he wants to go, Steve pauses and glances up at Tony. “Can I touch you?” he asks, his voice impossibly small and uncertain in a way that deepens the sweet pain behind Tony’s breastbone.

“Do you still want to?”

“More than anything, sweetheart.” The unexpected endearment, spoken in that throaty rasp, as if Steve’s sharing a secret, swoops through Tony and settles low in his belly, warm and comforting, a pleasure separate from all the others he’s experienced with Steve. Tony smuggles it away for later. _Mine,_ he thinks, and he knows that isn’t true, but he can pretend if he wants. No one else will know; no one else will get hurt.

“Then touch me.” Saying the words feels like flying, like being in his suit and getting those first few feet of air and realizing he won’t fall. Not unless he wants to.

Tony’s breath hitches as Steve strokes his thumbs in small, barely-there circles along the insides of his thighs, heating his skin and the blood that pulses beneath it. Gradually he increases the pressure of his hands, slow and deliberate, to make space for himself between Tony’s spread legs.

Sharp teeth nip, playful, at Tony’s hip bone; Steve growls low, his breath a hot puff of air against Tony, who huffs a soft laugh as their gazes mesh. Tony can’t resist reaching down and petting the silky-slip-glide tangles of Steve’s hair; can’t help the hot surge of satisfaction that flashes in him when Steve sighs and turns his face into Tony’s hand, gorgeous and so responsive to his touch.

Part of him wants to look away—the part that knows with a terrible certainty that nothing and no one gold or good ever stays. _He’s_ never been enough to make anyone stay. Or maybe it’s just that he’s never deserved to have anyone stay. He’s— He’s a goddamn mess. More trouble than he’s worth. People, good people, have died because of him. Because of Stark tech and Stark selfishness and Stark ignorance, and he wants to try, Tony _is_ trying: to be better; to do better; to do more. It’s not enough. He’s not enough. Maybe someday. For now, he hasn’t earned the right to—

_It’s just sex._

A smaller part of Tony keeps looking at Steve. A part that wants, so very many things, with an ancient, yawning hunger that’s still unsated, despite his recent orgasm. Because it has nothing to do with that. Steve with his cheek nuzzled to Tony’s naked thigh, fair Irish skin against Tony’s olive hints, watching Tony while his soft, pink mouth flickers into a sweet smile tinged with melancholy. The sweetest smile. And it hurts, even as Tony arches into it. Hurts to look at it, like staring directly into the sun, burning the afterimage onto Tony’s dark eyelids. It hurts, needle-thin glass in Tony’s lungs with each breath he takes, and it hurts in his stomach, and it aches, thick and heavy, in the backs of his eyes. Still, he doesn’t turn away—can’t turn away—because he wants to take that smile, press it between the pages of one of his old MechE textbooks, and when it’s flattened and preserved, tuck it safely in his chest, beneath the arc reactor.

So he can keep it with him, always, let it warm him when winter returns, and take it out and look at it sometimes when Steve’s gone, and he’s alone. Again.

_Nothing gold can stay._

_It’s just sex._ _  
_

Reluctantly, Tony lifts his hand from Steve’s hair and moves, slowly pulling his legs back so he doesn’t accidentally kick Steve. “I should go.”

Steve’s big, but he also moves fast. In two blinks, he pulls himself up on his knees and straddles Tony, one hand at Tony’s hip, the other warm at his shoulder. Tony has to tip his head back to be able to make out his face. Tony hates even the idea of magic, but Steve’s sweat-soap-sex scent weaves a spell around him, making him want to close his eyes and just breathe Steve in.

“Stay,” Steve says, his voice deepening, seducing the word into a caress, not a command, as he draws a hand from Tony’s shoulder up his throat, to the back of his head, where he curves it through his hair and against his scalp, gently cupping his skull. Tony shudders once and melts into his touch. “Please stay.”

 


	2. I am your neighbor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out as a one-shot, and if you read the first part before, you may be happier leaving it that way. If you choose to read this part, I hope you'll enjoy it. Please let me know what you think if you feel up to it! Thank you so much for reading; comments, kudos, etc. make my day. Truly. 
> 
> You can also find me at [tumblr](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com); come talk to me if you like. I do not bite. :) I’ve a Stony playlist on Spotify here. Send me some song suggestions.
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> This author replies to comments.
> 
> Please note: 
> 
> If you don’t want a reply from me, for ANY reason, please feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond. :)

“What do I get if I stay?”

Tony’s talking just to talk—flirting because he can and hell yes, it’s fun to flirt with Steve—head tipped back and sending faux coy glances up at Steve through his lashes. Really, he’s got a hot, pleasantly-heavy Steve Rogers naked and willing in his arms; he’d be a pretty big fucking fool to require more inducement than that to remain exactly where he’s rooted at the moment.

Shivers wend outward from where Steve’s broad, rough fingers move with exquisite gentleness over Tony’s scalp. That’s one of his special spots; a touch there, especially from Steve, almost instantly lights up the pleasure centers in Tony’s brain and makes him squirm at the nearly too much, too good sensations cascading through his body.  There’s something mind-bendingly hot about knowing that for all the raw force that Steve’s serum-enhanced hands are capable of exerting—to rend, to smash, to demolish—on Tony he uses them only to coax pleasure.

A small, involuntary noise, something embarrassing and needy and trapped in the liminal space between a grunt and moan, drops from Tony’s mouth, and Tony’s hands spasm, fingers clenching where they rest against the smooth, hot expanse of skin and muscle on either side of Steve’s spine.

“Fuck,” Tony swears. He feels the sudden flare of heat in his cheeks, and yeah, he cares about what his stupid face might be revealing to Steve, but only a little. “Don’t stop. Please.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Steve pauses and glances down at him, soft mouth rising in a pleased, slightly crooked smile as if he can parse every thought flitting through Tony’s mind, every warm curl of feeling drifting through his body, and Tony remembers waking up on his back after the Battle of Manhattan. He’d found himself lying amidst the midtown rubble after he was sure he’d closed his eyes for the very last time. Consciousness had pummeled Tony like he’d been body slammed into a brick wall while not wearing his armor, Hulk’s guttural roar echoing in his ears.

Steve kneeling at his side had been the first thing Tony had seen when his weighted, dry eyelids had finally blinked open, and that, that had seemed fitting somehow. Steve’s eyes, singing clear as the pure, bell-like tone that came from running a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass, set in his ash-smudged, sweat-streaked face, watching Tony with visible worry and relief—for Tony?—all the more clear and blue for being set against a backdrop of so much dirt, billowing smoke, and Chitauri-wrought chaos.

Steve hadn’t looked like the idol from the old reels, photographs, posters, and rose-tinted stories from Tony’s childhood then, or any kind of idol, period. Just plain, baseline human, his broad chest rising and falling as he panted with exertion, and his skin and uniform painted with a layer of grime. (But still untouchable, then—at least by Tony.)  

 _I’m alive, I’m alive, thank you, I’m alive,_ Tony remembers thinking then, because though he’d been willing to die when he flew that nuke through the portal—what did his paltry life matter when matched up against the lives of so many others?—he hadn’t wanted to. Those thoughts had been followed by, _Fuck, he’s so beautiful_ . _I can’t have him, but I want him._

Now, however, this Steve, in this bedroom, still beautiful but no longer quite so untouchable, shifts in a lissome, fluid movement Tony can’t help but admire, moving his legs from their bent position comfortably nudging Tony’s hips and rearranging them so they’re curled snug around his waist and tucked behind his back. The pale gold hair on Steve’s legs drags across Tony’s sensitized skin. A lapful of warm, snuggly Steve and Tony wonders, head a touch hazy, _How’d I even get this lucky?_  

Rain seeps from the sky and slides blurry and impressionistic down Steve’s bedroom window. There’s a city out there, a wild world full of color, people, puzzles, and problems, and he and Steve are a part of it. But for Tony it feels like the best kind of selfishness to hold himself separate from all those things and simply exist in Steve’s orbit for a short while.

“Anything you want,” Steve replies, finally answering Tony’s earlier question, “kitten.”

Fine, that was just—that was just patently unfair. “Kitten?” Though it occurs to Tony that he really ought to sound more outraged, he finds he can’t quite manage it when Steve touching him, however the hell he wants to do it, feels so fucking good.

“You’re like a cat, Tony. Just a warm ball of fluff,” Steve says with an undertone of warmth and—Tony’s scared to even think it because what if it’s just his overactive imagination?—affection. “Give you a little scritch on the head or behind the ears and you purr.”

Tony straightens his spine and opens his mouth to argue the point because, because, well, in fact, he is a scientist and a creator and person of ~~no~~ dignity and consequence, not a “ball of fluff,” but then he thinks better of it and just closes his mouth again and slumps back down with a half-hearted shrug. “Meow,” he says instead.

Steve goes back to stroking Tony’s hair, and it’s a gift for Tony, that he gets to see how Steve’s lips tug upward into a smile when Tony purrs a sigh and leans into his touch. It almost seems like Steve enjoys touching him.

“You know, you can have anything you want from me,” says Steve, voice soft and rumbling.

“Mmm.” Tony wets his lips and lets one of his brows flick up. “Anything?” he asks, dropping his voice, and he can’t resist silk-spinning the word into something just a scant bit dirty. That, at least, feels familiar. Safe.

Waiting for an answer, Tony tightens his arms around Steve and leans incrementally closer until he is carefully dragging the scritch-scratch of his goatee back and forth over one of Steve’s sweet, pink nipples. Two circuits, Tony notes with a warm swirl of satisfaction, that’s all it takes and Steve’s nipple’s taut and peaked, so deliciously pretty. He flicks it with the tip of his tongue and feels Steve wriggle and arch in his lap with a breathless little noise. When Tony peeks down between their bodies, he’s rewarded with the sight of Steve’s half-hard cock. _Good._ At least Tony can give him that.

“Well,” Steve shrugs and brings his face close to Tony’s, brushing his nose along Tony’s cheek, not exactly taking the filthy bait, “you know I don’t have all that much. But if you want it, it’s yours.” He nudges a kiss to the corner of Tony’s mouth, simple and soft, melting Tony’s bones and dissolving the few neurons he still has, thumb drawing a line over his chin, and oh, Tony knows perfectly well he shouldn’t be greedy; he should just be grateful for whatever of Steve he’s got. That’s what a more sensible person would do. Unfortunately, Tony’s never been sensible. He’s greedy. Insatiable. He can’t help it: he wants Steve and Steve and more of Steve. Anything. Everything. The wanting is a hot, restless stirring under his skin. “You just gotta ask for it, Tony.”

And yes, there it is, Tony’s problem clearly laid out for him by Steve with flashing, neon arrows: whatever he wants from Steve, he’s going to have use his words and ask for. Because while Steve’s a super soldier of many talents, mind reading, so far as Tony knows, anyway, isn’t one of them. This—the thought of talking and asking and saying exactly what he means is...It’s...Well, it’s terrifying, is what it is. But maybe he can logic his way into doing it. Steve told Tony that he likes him and that he thinks he’s beautiful, the latter of which Tony still doesn’t believe, but whatever, and that includes his admittedly far less than model-perfect abs and the ugly mess of scars on his chest. While they’ve established that Steve is sufficiently mortal that he _occasionally_ says things he doesn’t mean, they’ve already had sex, and Tony can’t guess what other motives Steve could possibly have for lying to him about actually liking him. Him, of all people. There’s no accounting for taste.

“You, Steve”—he clears his throat—"I just—” Tony pauses and gives his head a rough shake. Why did this seem like a good idea? _It’s not. It’s a goddamn terrible idea._ The most terrible idea in the history of Tony's terrible ideas. With trembling fingers, he catches at Steve’s hand that’s still so warm and steady on his face, tracing over his skin like he, Tony Stark, is something delicate and breakable, which no one is supposed to know—and isn’t that hysterically funny? _Hahahaha_ . Tony inhales a gasping breath, finally locking eyes with Steve who’s staring back at him with wide blue eyes; _oh Jesus fuck_ , there’s sweat springing up as if he’s sprouted a damn fountain under his arms and Tony’s dizzy and lightheaded, like he’s barely getting any oxygen to his stupid brain, his pulse a fierce drumbeat in his chest, ears, fingers, toes— “I just want you.”

(He said it; he did it. Tony took off the armor—and the brittle, glittering masks he’s learned to wear for the world, and it didn’t kill him. Okay, it almost did. And the waiting, the waiting for Steve’s response is unbearable. Tony’s going to grind his molars to dust in the meantime. Then he’ll need dentures unless he just wants to gum his food for the rest of his pathetic life, and damn it, he’s too young for dentures. How is this even his life?)

A dazzling smile breaks across Steve’s face. It’s light and cool against Tony’s hot skin, refreshing as rain during a sudden summer storm. He squeezes Tony’s hand and brings it to his mouth. At the firm press of Steve’s lips over the back of his hand, Tony sags back and closes his eyes in sweet relief. When he opens them, Steve’s still smiling, head ducked to look him directly in the eyes. “Sweetheart,” Steve says, and the endearment _thwaps_ Tony in the chest, “you _have_ me.”

“I do?” Tony asks, blinking, and he can hear how annoyingly dazed he sounds.

“Yeah, genius,” Steve replies, and the way he says it tells Tony he’s laughing at him, “you do. What did you think was happening here?”

“I don’t know.” Tony swallows, feeling more than a bit sheepish. “Just sex?” That isn’t supposed to sound like a question, but that’s how it comes out, and here they are, and Tony’s confused.

“No.” Steve shakes his head in denial. “ _You_ said it was ‘just sex,’ Tony. Not me. I never said that.”

“But...If…” Tony sputters, and he knows he sounds practically incoherent. It’s just that he’s honestly stunned because it never once occurred to him that Steve was doing this for any reason beyond the obvious one. “Why did you go along with it?”

“I told you, Tony: I like you. Don’t look so skeptical. You’re funny, smart, kind—“

“—good with my hands,” Tony says as his brain slowly comes back online.

“Very good with your hands,” Steve says, and there’s a gorgeous smile curving his gorgeous, pink mouth and lighting up his diamond-bright eyes. Tony wants to kiss him so very, very badly. He’s going to kiss Steve until he’s gasping for air and flushed from the tip of his annoyingly straight nose all the way down his solid chest to his gorgeous cock, and then he’s going to—

“Look, the sex isn’t exactly a hardship. I hoped maybe there’d be more than that, in time, but if there wasn’t, well…” Steve flushes from the tips of his ears on down; his skin’s so fair he can’t hide it, and Tony loves that about Steve, he adores it almost as much as he adores him, and it dawns on Tony that this saying what he means business isn’t always easy for Steve; there are risks and vulnerability in it for him, too, and why didn’t Tony realize that before? “I guess I told myself I was okay with whatever this turned out to be.”

“And are you? Okay with whatever?”

Steve grimaces and looks away, throat working in a long swallow. “No. I guess not.”

“But you never said anything, Steve,” he says and hopes it doesn’t sound like an accusation.

“Sex is what you asked for,” replies Steve, and there are layers of emotion that Tony can’t quite excavate vibrating in his voice.  Anger? Bewilderment? Hurt? What is it he’s hearing? “That’s what you said you wanted from me. I didn’t...I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Oh. I see. But maybe you were”—Tony pauses because he’s an idiot about some things, so he only just realized how vulnerable Steve is, too, and even though he knows he sucks at being kind and reassuring, Tony prides himself on being a fast learner. Maybe...Maybe he can fumble his way into learning how to be both those things for Steve’s sake. He wants to. If he’s already hurt him, albeit unintentionally, he doesn’t want to hurt him any further. So he grasps Steve’s hand, the one that’s resting warmly against Tony’s side as if it’s never belonged anywhere else, and brings it closer to him until he can touch his lips to the inside of Steve’s wrist, tasting his pulse, and mouth his way up the inside of his forearm to the warm, soft hollow at the crook of his elbow—“a little scared, too?” Trying to project kindness and acceptance because those are what he most wants to give Steve right now, Tony tilts his head to the side and slants a contemplative look up at Steve.

Not pushing. Not challenging as he does sometimes. Not utilizing brute force. Some things require a little more finesse; this seems like one of those things.

Steve frowns, his forehead crinkling into tense lines and his shoulders going rigid. He looks—he looks young and unsure, the antithesis of the firm, confident captain who expects his orders to be followed that he is out in the field, and that unfurls something aching and warmer than sympathy or even empathy in Tony’s chest. After setting Steve’s hand gently in his lap with a final soothing pat, Tony reaches up and smooths his fingers over Steve’s wrinkled forehead and sweeps them up through the short, soft strands of blond hair that have flopped down. “At ease, soldier,” he says lightly.

And who knew? It turns out to be the right thing to say, after all, because right in front of him Steve...unlocks. Those cramped shoulders drop; his forehead smooths out, and the lines that had been etched there mere seconds ago bloom at the outer corners of Steve’s eyes instead. He laughs quietly and looks back at Tony, squeezing his hand. “Yeah. I thought I was just waiting for the right time to say something. Maybe I was just scared.”

“You could say something now. I mean, if you want.” Smiling, Tony rubs his thumb over Steve’s hand. “I’m listening."

“Tony. I want…” Steve licks his lips and sits up straighter, and it’s as if Tony can actually see him gather his courage. Seeing it fills him with a wave of empathy and pride. What Tony wants to do then is kiss Steve’s ridiculously kissable mouth until they both pass out from lack of air, but he did tell the man he was listening. It would be a pretty terrible lapse in manners for him to interrupt Steve now. “I want to take you to the movies and share fake buttery popcorn and REESE’S Peanut Butter Cups with you. I want to hold your hand. I want to make you chicken noodle soup when you’re sick, and—”

Tony almost pinches himself to confirm he’s awake and not having the best dream ever because everything Steve says he wants, Tony wants, too, and a whole lot more besides. He’s not alone in his wanting. Not anymore. Somehow, when Tony reached out, Steve reached back, and in what world is that even possible?

To his surprise, Tony’s eyes feel hot and damp. But he just swallows and blinks several times before he speaks. “Lies and slander, Steve. Tony Stark never gets sick.”

“Uh huh. Sure he doesn’t.” Steve curves a big, warm palm around Tony’s jaw, and his breath brushes Tony’s mouth, and the only thing Tony can think is, _Mine. Mine. Mine_.  It still isn’t true, but oh, he still wants it to be. “Be my fella, Tony. Would you, please?”

The words are ridiculous and anachronistic but perfect, too, because of how perfectly Steve they are. So Tony just flashes him a teasing grin and says, “Throw in a blowjob and you’ve got yourself a deal, Rogers.”

With Steve’s shout of surprised laughter still buzzing in his ears, Tony plants his palms on Steve’s warm chest and shoves, toppling them both over on the bed. Tony’s blood pops, champagne fizzy in his veins. He feels effervescent, suspended in this ephemeral moment, his skin too tight and his fragile, human body too small to contain everything he feels. The only thing to do, the only thing he _can_ do, is share it.

Steve’s hands hot at Tony’s waist and sliding down to his hips. Steve grinning up at Tony with that soft, goofy look on his face that Tony just wants to lick off him like frosting on a red velvet cupcake. “Fuck. So sweet,” Tony says, hands kneading Steve’s thick shoulders, mouth against his throat, tasting the scratch of stubble, and Steve moans, Adam’s apple bobbing as he tilts his head back, just like Tony hoped he would. Eyes shut, Tony nips all over the long, long stretch of Steve’s throat until he’s whimpering and full-body shudders coil and uncoil through him, lightning-quick, where the sturdy heat of him lies spread out under Tony like an incomparable feast. Tony is starving. He sucks hard, then, relishing the way Steve bucks up into him, and licks little kitten licks over Steve’s skin. Well, Steve did say he was like a cat. Any hickeys he manages to leave won’t last long, thanks to the serum, but that only slightly lessens the fun of putting them there to begin with. Steve keens, responsive and willing, hips rolling against Tony, and that, that right there may be the sweetest sound Tony’s ever heard.

“C’mere,” Steve says, breathless, hands tugging at Tony. When Tony manages to glance up at him, head lolling heavy on his neck, Steve’s cheeks are flushed a deep pink; his eyes are glazed and heavy-lidded. Steve looks thoroughly debauched, well-used, and it’s all thanks to him, Tony thinks with a deep, hot surge of satisfaction.

He makes a noise of protest at Steve’s request and goes back to kissing Steve’s throat.

“No, Tony. C’mere. C’mere. C’mere,” Steve chants. “Sweetheart, come here,” he says, and _wow_ , Tony jolts like he’s touched a live wire, tingling heat rushing over and under his skin as he suddenly understands how this is going to be a problem for him. When Steve says “sweetheart,” especially in that breathless, utterly wrecked voice, Tony just wants to fold like a cheap suit and give Steve a dozen of whatever the hell he wants. Steve can never know this; Tony sure isn’t going to be the one to tell him.

“What do you want?” Tony barely gasps against Steve’s throat. Panting, Tony reaches down and gives his own dick two slow, wet strokes, in a bid to get a little friction. “Tell me.”

“Wanna kiss you,” says Steve, the words hoarse and rough, and then he pulls Tony’s hand from his dick and sucks two of Tony’s fingers into the wet heat of his mouth, swirling his tongue around them and making an obscene noise low in his throat.

Tony makes a sound, too. Something weird and high-pitched and severely unsexy, and he thinks maybe his eyes roll back in his head. It would be embarrassing, maybe, if he didn’t feel Steve’s cock, hard and thick where it’s trapped between their bodies. Tony wants Steve, and Steve wants Tony. They both said so.

( _It's not just sex_.)

Steve laughs around Tony’s fingers in his mouth, the sound rich and dark as a secret, and it shoots straight to Tony’s dick.

“That’s...not fair, Mr. Rogers,” Tony manages to say, the words slurred and sloppy because his mind keeps stuttering and stopping and his thoughts are so damn fogged-up. “So not fair,” he says, his voice thick and heavy, and ruts lazily against Steve.

In answer, Steve releases Tony’s hand from his mouth and quickly puts both his huge, hot hands on Tony’s ass and _pulls_ , rubbing them against each other and sparking electric flashes of heat everywhere. _Oh, that’s so good._

 _"_ Gimme some sugar,” Steve says, curling the words under Tony’s jaw, hot and silly-sweet right against his skin.

“Okay, bossypants. Mmm. You fight dirty. Hold your cowboys. Carriages. No, horses. Whatever. Coming. I’m coming,” Tony says, loopy and ablaze and so fucking turned-on, and then Steve’s hands, those beautiful, battle-calloused hands, are warm and curling through Tony’s hair, probably tousling it into a rat’s nest, not that Tony gives two flying fucks, and gliding over his cheeks, framing his face, thumbs stroking, gently but inexorably leading him to Steve’s mouth.

And Tony lets himself be led.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’ve enjoyed any part of this story, please consider reblogging [this post on tumblr](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/post/186406062728/hes-a-candle-burning-in-my-room-complete). That will help more people find the story. Thanks for considering.


	3. You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [Kitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbaddonsLittleWItch/pseuds/AbaddonsLittleWItch), who liked this fic, and told me so, before we even knew each other. Thank you. *hugs*
> 
> My life is currently conspiring against writing, but I have been chipping away at this and can't stand to look at it any longer, so up it goes. Enjoy if you read it; please drop a comment if you feel like you can.

At the first press of their mouths together, Steve moans, long and loud, and even muffled as it is by Tony’s mouth, it sounds like Tony’s freed it from an iron-barred cage somewhere fathoms deep inside him.

Maybe he has. Maybe there’s a heady sort of freedom in telling the truth, even or especially when the telling isn’t easy.

Tony’s hands link around the back of Steve’s neck, where the skin is warm and silky. Defenseless. Fine, soft hair brushes his palms and fingers, and Tony skims his tongue over Steve’s plush lips until they fall open on a strangled groan, and then he lets it press in and slide, sinuous, against Steve’s tongue. Steve’s mountain range of a body shifts, back arching, pushing him up into Tony, who reels, the contact electric, while Steve kisses him back. Eager. Sweet.

Soft mouth. Warm breath shared between them. Smooth, sleek, wet-warm strokes of Steve’s tongue against his, and it’s good. Too good. Too much. Almost more than Tony can stand. More than pleasure. Bigger than his flawed, broken, still-fighting body. Greater than sex, Tony finally concedes to himself.

An alloy of all those things and something else besides. (Something Tony steadfastly refuses to name because names carry power and―)

Gossamer and quick, joy beats hummingbird wings inside his ribcage. It zings at the base of his spine and buzzes on the surface of his palms, and Tony thinks he must be bright―brighter than the arc reactor cobbled into his chest―incandescent, even, a confusion of blood, skin, and light.

He can’t stop touching Steve.

Steve, who’s warm. Solid. _There_ ―when so many others left or let themselves be pushed away. Pushing and punching with barbed wire wrapped fists is what Tony knows best. Life lessons learned under his father’s soles and at the lip of his father’s highball glass filled with amber poison smelling of charred oak and false promises.

And yet―

Yet Steve is still there.

Tony’s fingers splay wide and shaky where they brace against the levee of Steve’s naked chest as he and Steve etch each other with kisses too sweet to forget. He wants to remember all of them. Wants to secret each of them away and imprint them in his brain and elsewhere in his body, like all the stray bits of knowledge he’s squirreled away through his life. He doesn’t want to forget any of this―not the small, staccato gasps that shiver from Steve’s pink mouth at irregular intervals, or the hot bulk of him caught under Tony’s chest, stomach, hips, and legs, restless and rolling like the Atlantic’s water at high tide. Steve’s every movement thrums and echoes inside Tony.

(If he could, he’d ask J.A.R.V.I.S. to preserve it all.)

An archive of Steve’s kisses. That’s what Tony wants.

He’s kissed other men, and women, too, and experienced many kisses. Many of those kisses even felt good—left him breathless and wanting. Reams of data amassed, and his primary learning is this: kisses can say different things.

_Hello._

_Goodbye._

_I want you._

_Hurt me._

_Let me hurt you._

Even: _I hate you, but I still want you_.

This kiss with Steve, though, Tony decides, as he sucks on Steve’s cloud-soft lower lip with a laser-like focus, says this: _You._

Extraordinary in its simplicity.

 _You and you and you and_ ―

**_only you._ **

A sharp nip to Steve’s lip and Tony receives a whimper for his trouble. Smiling so wide he feels the muscles in his cheeks, chin, and up next to his eyes stretch with it, Tony drags himself away from Steve’s mouth, ignoring his miffed _Hey,_ and the charming, half-sulky pout his kiss-burnt lips fold themselves into. “Be quiet, handsome,” Tony says, mock severity in his tone, and wags his index finger at Steve in a gesture of chastisement. His chin dips and his shoulders shake in a chuckle when Steve flashes him a very blue, very narrow-eyed glance.

Steve follows up with a blunt tap to Tony’s ass. Even though the smack is so light it doesn’t even sting, it still startles Tony into a laugh. He recovers quickly. Fluttering his eyelashes, Tony says, “Are you gonna spank me, Rogers?” He moves off Steve to his side, raises himself to his knees, and wiggles his butt from side to side in clear invitation.

“That depends,” Steve says, a single wheat-colored eyebrow slanted upward in a challenge. His voice twists into smoke and gravel: “You going to behave?” He reaches for Tony and drags a slow, deliberate spiral that begins at the thickest part of his hamstring and ends at his ass (and Tony, well, Tony considers Steve’s question, shivering).

He sinks down on his side, right next to Steve, and props his head on his hand before he answers. “I deeply resent the implications of that question, Captain. When have you ever known me not to behave?”

“What are you talking about? You’re already misbehaving,” Steve says, mischief flickering in his expression. “I know we’ve discussed this: in here, I’m not your captain.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Tony tosses him a pointed smirk. “You’re always my captain,” he adds, tangling a caress into his words. While he understands Steve’s desire to separate his identities as Steve Rogers and Captain America, he hopes he’ll accept Tony’s statement in the vein that it’s intended.

“Hmm.” Lips pursed and expression thoughtful, Steve nods, easy and slow, like he’s turning over Tony’s words in his mind.

While he thinks, Tony sketches a finger around Steve’s areolae, first one, then the other, taking care to avoid touching his nipples directly. They perk up prettily under the indirect attention anyway, cotton-candy sweet. “That’s not so bad, is it?” Tony flicks Steve a glance up through his lashes and waits.

Steve smiles―and the slow-dawning rise of it catches in Tony’s chest and throat, making his breath stutter. “No, I guess not,” he finally replies, and his tone is untroubled. A flash of eyes like stained glass shot through with sunshine. “Do you…?” A sprinkling of hesitation sneaks into his voice. “Do you want me to?” His tongue dips out and slicks his bottom lip, leaving it shining pink and wet in the lamplight. “To spank you?”

Now Tony’s sure he isn’t imagining it, how Steve’s voice dipped on _spank_ . “Maybe,” he replies with a grin. “I need to think about it.” Operating on a hunch, he carves his smile into something with serrated edges. “Or maybe”—he lowers one of his hands to Steve’s hip and watches his own fingers slow dance over muscle and bone—“you’d like it if _I_ spanked _you_.”

Steve inhales, a whip crack of sound. Because Tony’s gaze is already centered on Steve’s hip, he notes how Steve’s cock, fully hard and flushed a deep, needy rose, jerks. _Interesting_. Clear fluid wells from the slit and slips down over the head and foreskin. The sight floods Tony’s mouth with saliva. Licking his lips, Tony tips his head to the side and returns his attention to Steve’s face; lets his gaze go heavy-lidded and hot as they stare at one other, unblinking. Steve’s hand twitches, once, where it rests on Tony’s ass.

Red streaks across Steve’s cheeks and sluices downward from there. The effect remains perpetually charming—and compelling. Unlike Steve, he’s not an artist. But Steve’s blush makes Tony want to drape his naked body in fire engine red sheets just so he can watch Steve’s skin gleam against their backdrop. Or maybe a red satin ribbon looped loosely around his beautiful throat.

Tony catches the hitch in Steve’s breathing and the increase in its speed only because he’s listening for it. Steve swallows, throat working, and Tony tightens his hold on his hip. There’s a sudden tension throbbing in Steve’s sinews―Tony feels it under his hand―and a certain wary watchfulness ticking in the spring-loaded quirk at the periphery of his kiss-ripe mouth.

Neither one was there before. Tony’s certain he doesn’t want them there now, either.

Deliberately, Tony loosens his hand and slip-slides it up Steve’s side―feeling his abs flex and ripple like a sleeper awakening in response to his touch. _His_ touch, not someone else’s―and Tony’s human enough to feel a satisfaction both vicious and tender at that seductive piece of knowledge. His hand journeys still further up to sift and stroke through the dark gold thatch of hair that grows, soft, under Steve’s arms.

Tony draws in a shuddering breath.

Everything about Steve is savagely pretty.

Sensing that this might decrease Steve’s apparent discomfort, Tony intentionally breaks eye contact. “Relax, sweet cheeks,” he murmurs, nestling closer before draping an arm across Steve’s chest and massaging his shoulder.

“Sweet cheeks, Tony? Really?” Steve shoots back, nose wrinkled like an adorable rabbit.

Tony waggles his eyebrows, tries to make his face as lecherous as possible, and gets a good, solid handful of Steve’s ass, and squeezes. “See? _Sweet cheeks_.”

Steve blinks back at him, shaking his head. He opens his mouth and then, after a moment,  snaps it shut.

“Ahem,” Tony says, and clears his throat for effect, “as I was _saying_ , it’s not like I’m going to paddle your sweet cheeks right this minute.”

It was the right thing to say. Steve laughs, body shaking with it, and Tony props his head on Steve’s chest and smiles back. When the laugh peters out and Steve finally quiets, he wipes his eyes and then runs a hand through Tony’s hair, ruffling it. When they’re alone, he touches it so often that Tony’s starting to think Steve has a thing for his hair. “Oh, you could try,” Steve says, one part honey and two parts vinegar, tart-sweet on Tony’s tongue. Mirth simmers in his sea glass eyes, and it’s a legitimate problem, how damn much Tony wants him.

“Uh huh,” Tony replies, dripping sarcasm. He flicks Steve’s earlobe and watches his eyes turn fond and crinkle at the corners with his crooked smile. “Yeah. Sure.” Keeping his other hand in motion kneading at Steve’s shoulder, Tony tucks his face under Steve’s jaw and nuzzles the warm skin at his throat.

Sure enough, Steve’s body melts, goes lax and loose, resistance draining away, and he makes a small humming sound under his breath, as the seconds trickle by, thick and cotton-candy sweet.

Tony inhales deeply, allowing his lungs to expand as much as possible. His nose catches the now-familiar faded remnants of Steve’s deodorant, a hint of salt from his clean sweat, and Steve. The scents aren’t complex—quite the opposite, in fact—but nonetheless dear. He waits until Steve’s breathing has slowed before he speaks again, pitching his voice low and calm. “We’re never going to do anything you don’t want to do.” As soon as that thought meets air, as soon as the words leave Tony’s mouth, he wants to snatch them back and swallow them because they sound so presumptuous. As if he and Steve have nothing but time and a future ribboned out in front of them, which, okay, maybe now there’s no immediate expiration date on their rela― On their _thing_ , but eventually the milk’s going to go bad, right, and then what? Then—

“But maybe I _want_ to do”―Steve’s voice is a quiet, soothing rumble under Tony’s face. His hand, warm, strong, and sure, sweeps from the curve of Tony’s ass to his lower back, where it fans out and strokes once, twice, three times, until Tony shivers into a languid stretch—“that.” Steve releases a long, slow breath, almost a sigh. His finger dips between Tony’s cheeks and rubs, gently.

“Mmm.” They’re still talking about spanking. At least, Tony thinks they are, and Tony’s up for almost whatever because sex can be play, and he loves playing with Steve. “Which one?”

“I’m not sure,” Steve answers, shoulders shifting minutely, and he sounds slightly breathless, his voice just raspy enough to make Tony shiver. “Maybe neither.” A soft exhalation of air. “Maybe both?”  
  
Tony absorbs this information. Allows a brief lull while he kicks its tires and peers at it from all sides. “If you want to play with that sometime, we can. If not, no harm, no foul.” His brows draw together, but Tony manages to keep his voice casual when a bitter thought tickles at the edges of his brain. “There’s no rush, right?” Tony says, and if there’s a stray tremble in his throat, a distinct rawness that doesn’t disappear when he swallows, at least it isn’t audible. And he tries to stop it, really he does, but Tony can’t keep his fingers from tapping arrhythmically against the meat of Steve’s shoulder.

“No,” Steve says, shaking his head, hair whispering against the sheets. He swallows Tony’s hand between both of his own, thereby stilling its anxious movement. Steve considers him for the span of several heartbeats, his gaze tranquil as it tracks back and forth between Tony’s eyes, and a small, curled-up smile plays peekaboo at the perimeter of his mouth. “No rush at all.”

There’s a warm-rain gentleness in his voice and his touch that slides over Tony and soaks deep into the places in him that until now, he hadn’t noticed were arid and barren. Steve’s hands fold warm and steady around Tony’s hand, smoothing over it and mooring him here, now, in the present, instead of letting him hurtle away on a riptide of nerves and what-ifs. He watches Tony with a quiet, singular intensity—like the rest of the world’s vanished, like there’s nothing and no one else he wants to set his attention to. The focus makes Tony’s stomach tumble over in a pleasant flip.

Cool mid-April air crawls through the window and skitters across Tony’s exposed back, clawing trails of goosebumps over his skin. They’re lying upside down in the bed, so Tony turns his hand in Steve’s grasp, lacing their fingers together, and tugs him along as he sits up and shuffles on his knees back toward the head of the bed.

Arms brush; knees bump; light laughter leaves both their mouths as Tony and Steve pitch onto their sides and arrange themselves comfortably next to each other. They land together with their heads sharing a single pillow, facing each other, and Tony shakes out the sheet, making it billow, a bit like a parachute. As it floats back down, Tony pulls it up to cover them both. When he tucks it securely over Steve’s bare shoulder, he can’t resist glancing over said shoulder with his fingertips, just before drawing back.

Steve notices. Of course, he notices; it’s Steve, after all. (Steve, who always notices if Clint’s favoring his right side after an op, or Nat’s looking unusually hollow-eyed, or Tony has imbibed nothing but espresso for more than forty-eight hours.) But he doesn’t say anything this time, just pushes up his eyebrows and throws Tony a knowing look, lips tipped upward only a touch. Tony responds by sticking out his tongue at him. Steve shoves him lightly in the shoulder and Tony snickers and catches his hand, brings it to close to his face so he can examine it.

Steve’s fingers are long and narrow, the skin smooth and seemingly unblemished. His nails are short and trim, the nail beds a healthy pink, with white half-moons vaulting from their bases. Fine, gold hairs sprinkle the back of his hand and the small spaces between his knuckles. Tony slowly brushes them against the grain and feels Steve’s hand twitch in his grip. From there, he dips his fingertip into the skin stretched between Steve’s fingers, caressing the low, warm valley there.

Steve makes a small sound―hot and cut-off―and Tony’s eyes dart up to catch it before he looks back at Steve’s hand.

Tony’s touched plenty of people before: men, women, and non-binary. He’s kissed them and licked them; rimmed, frotted, and fellated them. Fucked. Been fucked. Been fucked over.

He thinks—no, scratch that, he _knows_ —the way he’s touching Steve, he’s never touched another person like this before. The recognition unsettles him, makes him squirm under his skin. He forges on anyway.

There’s a freckle dotting Steve’s index finger, about a quarter inch below the cuticle, and Tony’s never registered its existence before. It looks like someone flicked a paint brush and splattered light brown paint on the canvas of Steve’s skin. Tony wonders how long the freckle’s been there. Since Steve was a boy with a heart too big and too fierce for his failing body? As an adult but still before the serum transformed him? Did he go to war; did he fight; did he bleed; did he watch his friends and his brothers die, all while wearing this tiny, helpless freckle on his finger? Or did the freckle bloom after he was pulled out of the ocean?

It doesn’t matter, not really. Still, Tony wonders.

He knows the brick-wall steadiness of Steve’s voice over comms during ops. He knows how Steve’s eyes go resolute and knife-sharp in battle. He knows how his strong thighs thicken and brace in the milliseconds before he throws his shield. He knows the stubborn _tick-tick-tick_ of a muscle in his jaw when he’s holding back a torrent of furious words.

But there are so many things he _doesn’t_ know about Steve—that they don’t know about each other.

Tony presses his closed mouth to the freckle, and Steve’s hand curls into a fist. Tony unfolds it and turns Steve’s hand over so it sits palm up.

While Tony’s been inside churches, a church has never been inside him. God? A human construct to comfort and control the huddled masses. He doesn’t believe in God—never has—let alone in palmistry or chiromancy. But he’s fascinated by the curved, branching lines on Steve’s palm anyway—because they’re Steve’s—even if he doubts Steve’s character or future are contained in them.

 _You and you and you and_ ―

(Tony glances up to find Steve staring back at him. He’s closer than he was a few minutes ago, his free arm slipped under Tony’s side and wrapped firm around him, his hand a weighty, restless brand moving against Tony’s back.

Holding his gaze, Tony raises Steve’s hand to his mouth and traces the tip of his tongue from Steve’s elegant, blue-veined wrist, up over the yearning arc that’s drawn at the base of his palm and culminates three-quarters of the way between his thumb and pointer finger.

Steve’s lashes are so very long, curling away from his eyes, and his pupils are blown wide―because of Tony?―the clarion blue of his irises a mere sliver of light around obsidian pupils. His broad chest rises and falls, rises and falls, rapidly, and his breath sweeps Tony’s face. He’s shivering, too, tiny vibrations Tony can feel where one of his legs lies tangled with Steve’s. Heat sparks in Tony’s chest and spreads into his belly, washes out into his hands, and rolls down between his legs to curl in the heavy throb of his cock. Tony finds he can’t parse the expression illuminating the sweet-sharp architecture of Steve’s face.)

**_only you._ **

“I like you,” Tony says, and takes Steve’s hand, the one he’s been studying, and drops a kiss to the center of the palm, before he places it on his chest, directly over the arc reactor. Then he cups his hand over the side of Steve’s face and carefully brushes their noses together. “I like you,” he says again and draws his finger over the Cupid’s bow of Steve’s upper lip.

“I—“ Steve says, but Tony shakes his head and cuts him off with a hand over his mouth.

He lifts his hand from Steve’s mouth, but Steve remains silent, even as he shifts nearer to Tony. “I like you.” A kiss to the smooth skin at Steve’s temple. “I like you.” One smack dab against the stern rise of his cheekbone. “I like you.” Two gifted in rapid succession to the soft, vulnerable spot just below Steve’s lip, above his chin. Oh, Tony’s learning that he really likes that place. “I like you. I like you. I _like_ you,” Tony says, raining kisses down on every part of Steve’s face he can reach—and starting to smile when he registers the matching curve rising on Steve’s lips. Tony’s smile grows brighter when Steve pets gently over his hair, cheeks, and jaw.

 _You and you and you and_ ―

**_only you._ **

Steve leans down and catches Tony’s lips with his own. A warm, fluttery sensation fills Tony’s chest, and sure, maybe it’s just his bum ticker. On the other hand…

Tony pulls away from the kiss, laughing at Steve’s frustrated groan. The smile doesn’t leave his lips or his heart as he scrambles out of Steve’s bed and shuts the window. It’s just chilly enough to feel uncomfortable now that their bodies are no longer post-sex sweaty and hot. He swears he can feel Steve’s eyes on him, and he preens under the more than welcome attention. It widens his smile as he turns and slinks back. Before he can even clear the edge of the bed, Steve snags his arm, lightning quick, and pulls him down. Tony collides with Steve with a muffled _oof,_ and then Steve’s hands are all over him, seemingly touching a thousand places at once.

But Tony pushes off and away from Steve and slides down toward the foot of the bed, taking the sheet with him.

Steve’s head and shoulders lift, and the contracted position showcases his abs in all their mouthwatering glory as he looks down at Tony, brow furrowed and lips pursed in an adorably puzzled frown. “Why are you all the way down there?”

“I’m so glad you asked that question,” Tony says. “Lie back, big guy.” He smooths his hands over Steve’s thighs,  squeezing gently and relishing the feel of the firm, thick muscle there. “ I, Tony Stark, am about to embark on a very important undertaking.” Here he pauses and takes a deep breath just to exercise a little showmanship and draw out the big reveal. “I am about to blow you.”

“But I thought I was going to blow you. Wasn’t that one of the terms of our agreement?”

“Hm. Potayto, potahto, cupcake,” he replies, grinning, and leans down and nuzzles the crease of Steve’s thigh, breathing in the salt-musk-clean scent. “I never specified who’d be the blower and who’d be the blowee.” This is going to be so much fun. He can hardly wait.

“Are you sure?” Steve asks. “Because I was looking forward to treating my fella…”

“Say it again.” He can hear the embarrassingly breathless note in his own voice.

“Say what again?”

Tony can feel a blush rising in his cheeks, but he tells himself not to worry about it because it won’t be as noticeable with his complexion as it is with Steve’s. “Um, call me your fella.”

“You’re my fella...sweetheart,” Steve, that unrepentant bastard says, a knowing twinkle in his eyes as he blinks innocently at Tony, and Tony almost has to bite down on his hand so he doesn’t let loose an utterly humiliating whimper. Oh, this is bad. It’s so, so bad because he suspects that Steve’s on to him—that he knows exactly what effect he’s having on Tony.

And what makes it a thousand times worse, what pours an entire shaker of salt in Tony’s gaping wound, is that Steve’s pink-as-sin mouth is curled up in a sassy smirk.

The nerve. The gall. The dirty, dirty tease. Tony’s going to make sure he gets his pound of flesh.

“Steve Rogers, you absolute terror, so help me, you need to shut your filthy mouth—”

“Filthy? Come on, Tony, how is that fair? I haven’t even said anything…”

“—and lie back and think of good old Uncle Sam or Nick Fury—”

“Nick Fury?! ” Steve exclaims, and Tony nearly bursts into laughter at his indignant expression. “No, thank you. I’d rather not."

“—or _whatever_ because right now I, I am going to do my patriotic duty and faceplant into your crotch.”

“You have an astonishing way with words,” Steve says, his voice austere, champagne dry, as he nudges Tony’s calf with his foot.

In retaliation, Tony takes Steve’s balls in his hand and gently strokes them, smiling up at Steve when he sighs and tightens his hands in the sheets. “Haha, smartass. Just admit it: you can’t get enough of it. Your sarcasm is not appreciated. Your dick, on the other hand, is.”

“Sorry, mister,” Steve says, and somehow— _damn_ him, how does he do that?—his voice remains completely steady, “it’s a package deal.”

Tony likes Steve. So much. Likes his wit and his big, squishy heart and sturdy, reliable nature. He wants to give him things; he wants to take his steady-handed composure and shred it to confetti. “Fine. I’ll take it.” Still smiling, Tony leans in and thumbs across the silky head of Steve’s cock, where it’s flushed and so deliciously wet that Tony gets hard just looking at it. When he pulls his hand back, a thread of precome stretches between Steve’s cock and Tony’s hand. Tony quickly sucks his thumb into his mouth and gets the satisfaction of watching Steve shift restlessly and kick up his hips. “I need to appreciate your package with my mouth. That’s what you deserve. We have a date, my mouth, and your dick, and let me tell you, nothing is going to get in the way of that. Well, except you, I guess, if you tell me you don’t want this. Let me, please. I’ll be so good to you, baby. What do you say?” It’s nothing they haven’t done before, but Tony’s desperate for it right now; desperate to make Steve feel good.

A moan tumbles from Steve’s mouth. “Okay. Yes. Please.”

“Thank god. I want your dick in my mouth and your come all over my face.”

“Oh my…” Steve gasps, a shudder arcing through his body. “Tony, you can’t just say things like that,” he says, cheeks pinking up.

Tony grins cheekily and winks, sliding his hands up to caress Steve’s stomach and hips before trekking a lazy path back down to roam over his thighs, front and back. “Your dick says otherwise, cupcake.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If you keep saying things...like that—” Steve’s voice has slipped into a rough, raspy thing that slides over Tony’s skin and settles warmly in his belly.  
  
“What, you mean like telling you how badly I want you to fuck my mouth?”

“TONY.” Steve groans and moves his hands around until they land in Tony’s hair and pet through it slowly. “Sweetheart, if you don’t stop that, I’m going to come before I even make it into your mouth.”

 _Yes._ What a pleasant notion that is; it makes Tony lightheaded. “I’m good with that,” Tony says, and his own voice has gone sex rough. “Paint me with your come.” Steve’s whimpering now, head thrown back, baring the long line of his throat. His fingers flex in Tony’s hair, and Tony wraps a hand around the base of Steve’s cock and squeezes lightly. “Oh, you _like_ it when I say that. Mark me up, baby. We’ll wait a few minutes, and you’ll be ready to go again.”

“You’re evil, Tony.”

“That I am,” he replies, aching, and licks a wet line from root to tip.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’ve enjoyed any part of this story, please consider reblogging [this post on tumblr](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/post/186406062728/hes-a-candle-burning-in-my-room-complete). That will help more people find the story. Thanks for considering.


	4. I wanna know you—run my fingers down the creases and unfold you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please mind the additional tag; there are mentions of past suicidal ideation in this chapter. Nothing graphic, but the mentions are there. Protect yourself if you need to.
> 
> Hi. If you have zero interest in fic authors, just skip on ahead to the story. On the other hand, if you’re like me and you love hearing about the people behind the stories, about their lives, about their motivations for writing a particular story, etc. please keep reading.
> 
> So according to AO3, I posted the first part of this on October 12th, 2018. My only sibling killed himself at the end of February 2018. To say that this was a surprise would be a massive understatement. My younger brother left behind a wife, two very young kids, me, my parents, my husband, my kids, and various other relatives and friends. For our family, his suicide was like a bomb that went off, and all of us he left behind were left digging shrapnel out of ourselves. Less than five months later, my father died. That wasn’t quite as much of a shock because he was older and his health wasn’t great at that point. Did he appear near death, though? No. Absolutely not. A couple of weeks later, one of my uncles died. He and I weren't close, so that death had a different level of impact.
> 
> (There's a reason I'm telling you all this, I promise.) For the longest time after that, I couldn't write. I wanted to, desperately, but I couldn't get anything out. Mid-September, I wrote and posted a few short fics for Stony and Sterek. The first chapter of this story, which is around 3500 words, is the first remotely long piece I wrote after my brother and then my dad died.
> 
> For reasons that I can't quite articulate, it was important to me finish this story before the one-year anniversary of my father's death, which happens to be today—July 15th, 2019. So while I know this final chapter and probably the entire story would benefit from my leaving it in Google's cloud for six months and then editing it, I'm not going to do that. I have massive issues with perfectionism-induced paralysis, anyway, so I'm trying to align with [this video's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRtV-ugIT0k&t=3s) motto of, "Finished, not perfect." 
> 
> This chapter, just so you know, was supposed to be about 3500 words. Right now, it sits at 12,073 words. For me, that is a lot. I have good friends who sprint on Discord and write 30K in a few days; that is definitely not me. Knowing me, I will come back in here to add, subtract, and move around words. I already wish I'd written the damned thing in past tense instead of present. Anyway, if you read this far, thank you for your indulgence. Until I get itchy and make more changes, this is my story. Or rather, this is one of Steve and Tony's stories, as I wrote it. Hopefully, you'll find something you enjoy in it. Happy reading. <3 If you feel like you can comment, please know that I would love to hear from you, and barring abuse, I try my very best to respond to all comments.

Here’s the thing: Tony’s a considerate lover. That’s nothing new. He’ll happily eat out a woman until his mouth and chin are messy and slick with cream and his partner’s thighs are clamped around his head so tight he can scarcely smell or taste anything but pussy. Rim a lover easy, slow, and endlessly? Turn it into an exercise in decadence and patience until said lover’s hips kick restlessly and he begs— _please please fuck me please_ —for Tony to fill him with his thick cock? Yes, definitely. Why the hell not? 

When it comes to bodies, when it comes to the pleasure one can wring from them, he’s always believed in this old adage: if it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing right. 

What _’s_ new, however, is the bright-sharp need that pricks Tony now. Draws blood, even. As he lingers in the v of Steve’s spread legs, it wells up in him, this desperate desire does, not only to please, to make it good, so good for Steve, but to worship. 

Steve calling him his fella shouldn’t affect him like this―shouldn’t scratch with insistent, razor-tipped claws at something hidden inside Tony that wants to give and give to this kind, amazing person who says he likes Tony and, as difficult as it is for Tony to believe, seems like he’s going to stick around long enough for them to learn each other’s quirks and likes and dislikes.

It shouldn’t, but it does.

The sex is good; the sex is amazing. But along with the physical, at least this time, with this person, comes an intense and unsettling craving—a storm surge of want—to _know_ Steve. To be known by him. 

Only the latter scares him.

“Tony.” 

His name, the two syllables spoken softly, beckons Tony’s attention; unfurls a rich, sweet ache that begins in his chest and culminates in his cock. “Hmm?” He angles his chin to rub his beard against the coarse hair that surrounds Steve’s cock; breathes in and fills his lungs with the scent of Steve that is stronger and more earthy here. He loves that scent.

“Look at me,” says Steve, “please,” the epitome of polite but still compelling, and Tony, he complies. He does. What else can he do when Steve asks so nicely? Well, he could deny him, but as he searches himself he finds there isn’t any part of him that wants to do that. “Since you’re my fella and all”—Steve, the little shit, winks, actually, honest-to-god _winks_ at him; Tony rolls his eyes even though a bolt of pleasure shoots through him at hearing that word applied to him once again; god, he’s so weak and easy for Steve—“just, uh, just before you make it so I can’t think anymore, I want to make sure you know…”  
  
“Know what?”

 “I like you, too, Tony. A lot. I like you a lot.” 

That’s Steve: part troll, part earnest with a capital E. Tony? Tony finds it—and him—utterly, ridiculously adorable.  

Tony says, “Yeah, I’m starting to get that.” Sure, his delivery might be controlled and dry, but the smile that stretches Tony’s lips, the one he suspects looks way beyond goofy and instead crashes headlong into stupidly lovelorn, well, that’s wholly out of Tony’s control. Maybe there’ll come a day when Tony tires of Steve telling him he likes him, but today is not that day. Today Tony allows himself to bask in Steve’s open affection for him. It’s precious and new and fragile, and he doesn’t want to take it for granted. He doesn’t even want to examine it too closely, lest he break it.

The fingers of one of Steve’s hands skim the join of Tony’s neck and shoulder before they tiptoe to his nape and finally, glide to his head and play with his hair. They spread warmth and a thick, drugging sense of contentment through his body. They touch him tenderly, move the strands with an aching gentleness that verges on too much, and Tony’s eyes flutter shut. A sigh escapes his lips and a shudder works through him. “And it should be clear already,” Steve says, fingers still in Tony’s hair and voice full of all the warmth, kindness, and reassurance Tony needs but has been too afraid to ask for, “but sometimes you and me, we talk past each other or maybe don’t understand things the way we should, so let me just say it: if you’re my fella, Tony, then I’m yours.”

At that, Tony’s eyes open. When he looks up, he finds Steve looking back at him steadily, pink lips canted in a shy smile that holds such fondness Tony’s breath hitches in response.

_I’m yours._

_Mine,_ Tony thinks, and the resulting click of rightness shakes him.

“You sure you mean that, big guy?” Tony makes sure to leave his tone light. “Be careful,” he warns, “you can’t take it back.” _Please don’t take it back_ , he thinks but doesn’t permit his mouth to say. He fixes his gaze on Steve and searches his face for signs of discomfort; he doesn’t find them. 

Steve just looks back at him, face relaxed under Tony’s inspection and one eyebrow angled sharply as if to ask, _Are you done yet; did I pass?_ “I’m sure,” he replies. “I don’t want to take it back.” Steve’s voice, a lighthouse beam cleaving the darkness. 

Feelings rise inside Tony. They twist and bubble from his stomach and climb inexorably to his chest until they’re about to overflow like boiling water poised to cascade over the lip of an unwatched pot perched on a hot stove burner. He’d been talking about getting Steve’s dick in his mouth and sucking until Steve came all over his face, but as much as he wants that―and he does, oh, he does―god, he really, really wants that―at its core, all he wants is to please Steve and take care of him. To be the cause of what makes him shiver and moan and above all, feel good. Whether it’s selfish or not to want those things so much, Tony doesn’t know and frankly, he doesn’t care. 

Making Steve feel good makes Tony feel good. There’s something in him that goes soft and melting when he turns his focus to pleasing Steve, and while it’s tempting to overthink it, at this moment, he promises himself he won’t. That may come later. With his brain, there’s always another cycle to run; another chance to second guess and doubt.

He doesn’t return Steve’s smile. Instead, he says, as confident and matter-of-fact as he can, “I’m going to take such good care of you, sunshine.” 

Sunshine. 

It’s the perfect endearment for Steve, who burns so brightly that looking at him can feel like staring directly into the sun. There’s a golden conviction in him, a faith in people, a ceaseless desire to search for the right thing to do and then do it, that warms Tony in ways that reach far beyond the physical.

“No,” Steve counters, firm, stubborn as the last leaf clinging to an oak branch in autumn, and so perfectly Steve, “we’ll take care of each other.”  
  
Now Tony smiles.

One of Steve’s hands is still tangled in Tony’s hair, grounding him, and Tony loves that; would gladly keep it there for an eternity if he could. (What a picture they must make, both of them naked, Tony stretched between the lazy sprawl of Steve’s legs. A study in contrasts: Steve’s pale, slim fingers speared through Tony’s dark hair.) 

The other rests, fingers splayed, high on the thick, muscled slope of Steve’s thigh. Tony reaches for that one and twines their fingers together, his calluses sliding against Steve’s smoother skin. Squeezes gently and feels a fresh layer of warmth blossom when Steve squeezes back. There’s some sort of sappy metaphor there, but Tony lets it nibble at the periphery of his mind and then swim away.

With his other hand curled firmly around the base of Steve’s cock, holding it steady, Tony inhales slowly and lets the anticipation of what he’s about to do build—in both of them. Then he seals his mouth around Steve’s cockhead, feeling how his lips stretch, savoring it for its own sake and for how Steve takes clear enjoyment in the act. A hot rush of awareness and need coils in Tony’s belly, and he deftly flicks his tongue against the slit until Steve’s hips give a decided twitch, feeding Tony more of Steve’s cock. Tony tastes a burst of precome. Steve’s hand tightens and releases in Tony’s hair in a sweet sting, and he chokes out a breathless “Ah,” that drags heat through Tony’s entire body because he loves coaxing helpless noises of pleasure from Steve, who is usually so controlled and contained. 

He licks one last time. With a sigh that rings with regret, Tony gently lets Steve slip free of his mouth and hand and shifts his hold to Steve’s inner thighs. The skin there is paler than elsewhere on Steve’s body due to always being covered with clothes and is dusted with blond hair that brushes against Tony as he sweeps his palms and fingers around and around on Steve’s thighs. 

What would it take, Tony wonders, to convince him to lie outside, naked, and let the sun drizzle him in shades of honey and gold? Come to think of it, that’s probably a spectacularly bad idea; with Steve’s fair, Irish skin, he’d need Tony to slather every last inch of him in sunscreen—and then reapply every five minutes. Oh, he can hardly believe what an inconvenience it would be for him to touch Steve all over.

Laughing to himself at that thought, Tony hooks his arms under Steve’s legs, lets the sweet weight of those limbs anchor him, and rubs his cheeks—first the bare part and then the dark rasp of his beard—against the insides of Steve’s thighs. A smile tempts his lips when Steve looses a low whimper, the soft sound a hot pulse of feeling in Tony’s cock. 

Helpless but without shame, Tony tilts his pelvis and lets his hips give a slow roll; catches his lips between his teeth and grinds himself against Steve’s smooth sheets. His mouth—soft; open; wet—he presses to Steve’s sensitive skin, allowing his breath to ghost across it and coax goosebumps. He unspools slow, damp kisses in a breadcrumb trail that wends from the secret, vulnerable crease where Steve’s thigh meets the rest of his body, near where his cock juts out, big, flushed, hard, and still shining and wet with both precome and Tony’s saliva, to his knee. Knowing that Steve’s enhanced hearing will catch the words even if he whispers them, instead, Tony goes silent. There are things that want to be said; they shiver, blood-warm and hungry, behind the prison of his teeth. _My_ _love, my own, mine_ , he mouths, trembling, in a mute ecstasy of devotion along Steve’s warm skin. 

Under Tony, Steve shudders.

”Please. I need—” Steve begs Tony through a voice gone so hoarse Tony feels it like a caress down the length of his spine. The sound leaves him raw and exposed, reeling, as if it’s been crafted for the purpose of flaying him open in this way. It hasn’t, Tony doesn’t think, because he’s never perceived Steve as consciously wielding that kind of artifice. “Don’t tease me. Please, beautiful,” Steve says, half plea and half admonishment. His eyes gleam—starlight in Tony’s sky. 

Beautiful.

As Tony’s cursed brain latches onto that word and plays it on a loop, a tidal wave of heat sweeps along his body and up into his face.  

Tony stops and glances up at Steve; the naked need he sees in his face, written into the small stitch between Steve’s brows, steals the air from Tony’s lungs. “Oh, sweetness, no”—his arms slide back out from beneath Steve’s legs, and he shakes his head—“I’m not teasing you.” He would; he will if they’re playing that kind of game. But this, right now, is no game. His hand slips to Steve’s hip. Curves over the bone and squeezes gently. “Anything you want,” Tony assures Steve, “I’ll give it to you.” An extravagant promise for sure, but Tony means it. Maybe too much. 

As attuned as Tony tries to be to Steve, to his body and its myriad signals and tells, he’s not a mind reader. He’s misjudged Steve’s level of need; he didn’t realize how fast it would ramp back up. The thought twists Tony’s mouth into a frown even as it sends a cascade of excitement flowing through him. He’ll make it up to Steve.

Chastened, he says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how badly you wanted it.”

“You.” Steve traces his fingertips along the periphery of Tony’s beard; tilts Tony’s chin and scours his face with tender eyes that appear to see everything, even the things Tony would prefer to keep buried.

“Hmm?”  
  
“I want _you_ badly, Tony, not _it_ ,” Steve insists.

“Oh. Well, yeah,” Tony replies, then mentally kicks himself seven ways to Sunday for the uber-intelligent response. He’s supposed to be suaver than this. Maybe with Steve, it’s okay not to be.

“The distinction matters to me. This isn’t just sex. You’re beautiful, Tony, and I...I want you.” 

Steve’s hand reaches down and Tony’s attention follows as Steve plays his fingertips across the slick-shiny-wet head of his own cock. Across the liquid pearled there. The rapid cadence of Steve’s breath catches in Tony’s ears and makes his own quicken. Their gazes track back up—hold and lock—and Steve’s eyes never leave Tony’s as his fingers scroll, shaking, across Tony’s lips, anointing them. 

“Holy fuck, Steve.”

Steve grins, bright and knowing and utterly irresistible, and for a moment that lasts for both a lightning flash of seconds and, paradoxically, millennia, Tony thinks he could be happy and stay that way if he could just be the cause of that breath-stealing smile. “Yeah?” Steve asks, still smiling, but with a flicker of what Tony thinks might be bashfulness in his voice and expression.

Tony nods rapidly. “Mmhmm. Yup. Yes. Definitely.” In his veins, Tony’s pulse thumps hard.  
  
Though he can tell Steve isn’t done talking, what Tony’s heard is enough to set him in motion. Gratitude and a mélange of too many other emotions to separate into their component parts swallow him and leave him a little clumsy, but he clambers up on the bed and without any finesse collapses on top of Steve, who easily takes his weight and just lifts Tony, patiently adjusting him to lie on top of his chest with zero sign of effort, which could be emasculating but really is only insanely hot. 

Arm resting against Tony’s shoulders, Steve fits his large palm to Tony’s hair and tucks Tony’s face under his chin, against his chest. Steve’s other arm wraps low and snug around Tony’s back, cradling him close. Sighing, Tony shuts his eyes and presses himself to Steve. All of Tony, from his forehead to his stomach to his toes, touches Steve. 

It’s perfect.

“You’re beautiful in perfectly-tailored suits,” Steve says into Tony’s hair, ruffling it with his breath and his speech. From many other people, the compliment would sound insincere. From Steve, though, it sounds real, like something Tony can allow himself to believe and not live to find his faith misplaced. Eyes still closed, Tony sketches his fingertips along Steve’s clavicle, savors the feel of smooth skin laid over solid bone, and lets the quiet, assured resonance of Steve’s voice that he both hears above him and feels below him where their bodies touch settle over him like the softest blanket; lets himself feel cherished and safe in the circumference of Steve’s strong arms. “And you’re beautiful in old jeans, with grease stains on your forearms and your nose, creating fantastic things. With your brain and your wit, you could charm all the goodness from a saint.” His lips ghost across his Tony’s ear, drawing shivers, his tongue careful against the cartilage. Steve’s voice grows hushed: “You’re you; you’re beautiful to me. Everything about you. I can’t help it—I want you. All of you. Even the things you don’t like. I...I accept you as you are, Tony.” By the time Steve utters the last sentence, his voice is a secret Tony has to strain to hear past the detonation of his own pulse and the white noise roaring in his head. “And I want it all.”

All the same, Tony does hear every word. The parts of him that have been hurt, the parts of him he’s armored from the world so they don’t shatter entirely, these parts want to discount Steve’s words. _Don’t listen_ , they hiss, _they’re only pretty, fool’s gold words_ . _They don’t mean anything._

But other parts of Tony are howling wolves, shivering and starving for exactly the acceptance Steve is offering. Like Tony’s mangled heart that keeps time with Steve’s words and how they sound with Steve’s voice curled around them like autumn woodsmoke. Steve and his words are a low, bright flame and Tony is so very, very tired of being cold.  

(Other people might say such things and not mean them, but not Steve. Surely, not him.)

He tries to memorize them—Steve’s words—along with the reassuring thump of Steve’s heartbeat under his ear and the heat, solidity, and sheer size of his whole body gathering Tony close and then closer and closer still. As if, through sheer will, he can absorb Tony into himself, transmute them from two separate beings into a single organism, if he simply tries hard enough. 

The idea of leaving Steve’s muted admission hanging out there alone doesn’t sit right with Tony. He unwinds Steve’s hand from his hair and lays it over his cheek and jaw instead. Holds it there with his own hand so it won’t dart away like a bird set free. “You have it,” Tony says, and his tongue feels too thick and too big for his mouth. _All of me, for as long as you want it_ , he thinks, but leaves the thought unspoken as he blinks back the unexpected damp in his eyes and presses a crooked smile beneath Steve’s jaw. A touch of the lip to warm skin, feather-light but pregnant with meaning. Everything in Tony yearns toward Steve. He pulls back and sits up a bit. “You’d still have it, if you, you know, hadn’t had the serum. We wouldn’t have met, I know, because of the whole being born in 1918 thing…” Tony’s rambling, he knows he is, but there’s a point he’s trying to make, and it seems important right then, to make it. “But if we had, if we _had_ , I would’ve wanted you, even without all the muscles—which, not gonna lie, are super nice—and the jaw of justice thing you have going on.” He takes a deep breath and tries to slow the rapid-fire barrage of his words. “I’d still want the you from before Project Rebirth,” Tony adds, whispering to Steve as he gazes into his eyes. 

Solemn and unblinking, Steve says, “Thank you.”

There’s a word for the look Steve sweeps over him then with those fathomless eyes, Tony knows there is, but he fumbles for it in his mental database and comes back empty-handed.

Steve’s hands drift. They melt over Tony’s temples; flow over his cheekbones; glide to the back of Tony’s neck and knead gently until Tony’s chest spreads on a luxurious sigh. When they stroke slowly down the plane of his back to his hips and then smooth back and forth over the curve of his ass, Tony gives a low whimper and feels his muscles twitch in an involuntary shiver. 

The smile Steve bestows on him is touchably soft. Private. It constricts Tony’s chest with equal measures of longing and worry. His relationship history isn’t the greatest, and he so badly doesn’t want to mess this up.

Long, warm fingers spread wide over the arc reactor in Tony’s chest. Light spills through Steve’s stretched fingers, tinting them a cool blue. This, then, is how Steve lures Tony off the cliff’s edge of dark, inescapable thoughts about his own inadequacy. Tony stares down at Steve’s large hand splayed across his chest, at the unanticipated comfort he finds in it, and nearly flinches at how _right_ it looks there. 

When their gazes connect, Steve’s eyes are clear, sun-dappled waters as he says, “I’m yours, Tony.” Steve sweeps his fingers over the scars on Tony’s chest in a slow, deliberate caress; the intensity in his expression thaws—melts—into something gentle and understanding but no less hungry when Tony trembles and sucks in a sharp breath. “Show me I’m yours.”

Faced with such a sweet demand, Tony acquiesces. Happily. His hand strokes through Steve’s short, soft hair. Down Steve’s body Tony journeys, a penitent making his pilgrimage back from Steve’s chest to the nave of Steve’s stomach and finally, to the high altar. Before he stretches out, he finds Steve’s hands with his own and places them in his hair. “Hold me here,” he says with their fingers still touching, seeking connection with Steve, always, “and don’t let go.” If there’s another layer of meaning wrapped around his words, Tony doesn’t examine it too closely. He has other work to do.

“If I let go, what happens then?”

Tony’s shoulders rise and fall in a shrug, and he gives Steve a deliberately cool, assessing look. “Keep ‘em in my hair, boss, or I’ll stop.” Tony looks up at Steve and makes sure he’s looking back before he drags his tongue across his mouth, mmm, already imagining Steve’s come sliding from it and Steve whimpers and bites his lip.

“You wouldn’t,” Steve says, brows pinched in a frown, and oh, isn’t that adorable?

“I so would.” Tony sharpens his mouth into a grin. “Care to try me?” 

“Hmph,” Steve says, sounding disappointed, but despite that and his narrowed gaze, his hands stay in Tony’s hair.

“Guess not,” Tony says, and winks at Steve. “Oh, and there’s one more thing.” He pauses and waits for Steve to ask the natural follow-up question.

“What’s that?” Steve asks, always a quick study.

Tony smiles, a small, dangerous thing. “Remember, I want you to fuck my mouth.” He enunciates as clearly as possible. 

At that, Steve’s face goes gratifyingly redder. Considering how much blood is currently in his cheeks, it’s a miracle that Steve has enough blood left to circulate elsewhere in his body.

Anticipating Steve’s pushback, Tony jumps in quickly: “Use me. Use me for your pleasure. If it’s too much or I need a break, I’ll pinch you on the hip, okay?”

“But I don’t want to use you. That’s so”—here Steve shakes his head and worries his lip with his teeth, distracting Tony when he doesn’t want to be distracted—“selfish...and crass. You’re a person, Tony, not a...not a sex doll.” Troubled lines etch themselves into Steve’s face; Tony just wants to smooth them away with his fingers and his lips. Fuckity fuck, he’s so royally screwed.

Internally, Tony screams at hearing Steve say _sex doll_ . “Of course, I’m a person. But I’m asking you to do this. Not every time we have sex, just now. And not only for yourself but for me, too. Look at it this way: your pleasure is my pleasure. You’re not forcing me to do anything. I’m not just consenting, extremely enthusiastically, I might add, I’m asking you.” Going silent, Tony lets Steve chew on that for a few moments. “Things only have the meaning we give them, you know. So,” Tony eventually says, gently rubbing his knuckles over Steve’s balls, “if focusing on making you feel good sometimes makes me feel really good, does that make me less of a person?” Turns out the whole communicating thing seems significantly easier when they’re touching.  
  
“No, of course not. People look out for each other. That’s how it should be in a relationship.” Steve’s face has a distinct air of indignation surrounding it now. “A good one, anyway.” 

_In a relationship._

A heady wash of near-giddy pleasure floods Tony at hearing that from Steve’s beautiful, beautiful mouth. “Exactly.” None of that is allowed to seep into his expression, however, when he flicks a glance up at Steve and taps his thigh, one eyebrow arched in question. “So, we good?”  
  
Steve peers back at Tony thoughtfully. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“Great.” 

“So long as I get to do that for you sometime.”

“There’s no sexual scorecard here,” Tony says on a laugh. “I’m all for equity, but things don’t have to be precisely even between us to be fair.”

“Gosh, you don’t say,” Steve replies with a super-sized dose of sarcasm. 

Tony grins. “Are you sassing me, Rogers?” 

“Yes.” Steve’s eye roll widens Tony’s grin. “I may not have quite as much experience as the great Tony Stark,” he says, nudging Tony playfully with his leg, “but I know _that_.” 

“So, sometime in the near future, you want to…?” Tony lets the sentence trail off and shoots Steve a disbelieving look.

Oh, Tony’s ruffled Steve’s pretty feathers. “What? You can want that but I can’t?” Steve says. His eyebrows lift in clear challenge, and hmm, Tony’s well acquainted with those origami-sharp creases that are starting to fold into Steve’s forehead. He’ll never admit it—a man’s got to have a code, after all—but there’s not much Tony likes more than an ornery Steve Rogers.

Is it Christmas? Bzzt. Nope, wrong season. His birthday? Next month. _Please, yes, in the name of Jesus, Allah, Zeus, and the_ [ _Flying Spaghetti Monster_ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster) _, I would love to fuck your mouth sometime_ rattles around in his head, absolutely screaming to get out, but alongside that swirls a vision of a livid, red-cheeked Pepper throwing five-inch Louboutins at his head with exceptionally good aim because anything Pep does, she does well, so Tony chokes back those words, for once, and chooses the alternate option: he shakes his head vigorously. “Nononono, you can definitely want that,” he hastens to say. “Far be it for little old me to stand in the way of anything you might want.”  
  
Steve licks his lips. (Granted, not a particularly novel move on Steve’s part but incredibly effective and elegant in its simplicity, so Tony grants him ten points for efficiency, natch.) “Oh, I want, all right.” 

The breath whooshes out of Tony in a weird hiccuping sound.  
  
Amusement curls cozy and warm around Steve’s mouth and eyes. At Tony’s expense, of course, but Steve’s eyes gleam so prettily and he watches Tony with such obvious delight and affection that Tony instantly forgives him. “I’m so glad we understand each other.”

“Yeah, me, too. Yup.” Tony reaches down between his legs and adjusts himself. Surreptitiously, he hopes. Given the self-satisfied, carnal tint that Steve’s smile takes on, those hopes are summarily dashed. “Great talk. Communication: it’s a thing.” Tony clears his throat loudly. “You can stop laughing at me any minute now,” he mutters, pouting.

“I’m not laughing at you,” Steve protests. “Stop pouting.” Off Tony’s deeply skeptical and unimpressed look, Steve’s face relaxes into the easy smile that Tony thinks is Steve at his most beautiful. Given the person in question, that’s saying quite a lot. “Okay, maybe I’m laughing a tiny bit. But only because it’s nice to get under your skin the way you get under mine.” 

Tony closes the circuit between them by returning Steve’s warm smile. He says, “Sunshine, you’re so deep under my skin I don’t know how to dig you out.” _Oops._

Steve’s eyes shine. “Yeah?” He sounds so pleased by Tony’s accidental admission that it nearly soothes Tony’s mortification.

“Yeah.”  
  
“That scares you.” It’s not a question.

Tony could deny it; he swallows hard and even considers it. “Yeah, it does, sometimes.” The back of his neck prickles uncomfortably. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him, but he turns his face into Steve’s thigh; nuzzles his warmth and presses a soft kiss there. 

Gentle fingers in Tony’s hair turn his face up so he has to look back. “When you get scared, tell me.”  
  
Blinking, Tony tries not to glance away. He owes both of them better than that. “Don’t know if I can.” A small laugh scalds his mouth, and he shrugs. “Not always, anyway,” he says, hoarse and honest, thumb worrying at a freckle on Steve’s leg.

“Try, please. And when you can’t,”—Steve kisses the tips of his own fingers and draws them across Tony’s lips in a light caress—“just hold on to me, and don’t let go. Think you can do that?”

Tony’s mouth twists. “I can try. For you.”

“No,” Steve says, seemingly without hesitation, shaking his head, “try for you.” The admonishment should sting but it doesn’t.

Tony’s eyes sweep Steve’s face, searching for censure, searching for the disappointment and anger he’s seen so often in the faces that meant the most to him, but all he finds there instead are compassion and warmth—so much warmth, all of it aimed at him—as Steve rubs his thumb back and forth over Tony’s cheek.  
  
There’s enough warmth there that it transfers from Steve to Tony, filling him up. 

“Okay, I’ll try.” 

“That’s all I can ask of my fella.” 

He could say thank you; he wants to say thank you. But the words seem too small, insufficient for the emotions welling up in Tony, unequal to the things he sees in Steve’s face, so Tony shifts his focus, determined to work with what he has. MacGyvering solutions is something he’s always been good at. 

Gently, he pulls down Steve’s silky foreskin, revealing the lush wetness coating the tip of his cock and sliding down the fat head. “Gorgeous.” He didn’t intend to say that; it just slipped out on its own. A murmur. At the delicious sight before him, saliva gathers in Tony’s mouth, and he glances up to capture Steve’s gaze. “You’re mine,” Tony says; maybe if he repeats the words often enough, he’ll begin to believe them. A secret; a declaration; the base essence of a prayer. A hushed moan falls from Steve’s mouth; catches Tony in the cock and in the heart, where it lodges, less like shrapnel and more like light. “Mine?” It spreads, inevitable and inexorable—how had he ever thought that casual sex with Steve would be enough? Tony Stark: master of self-delusion—with every heavy pulse of Tony’s heart. 

He waits.

“Yours,” Steve agrees, stark and true, pure gaze hooded but untainted by any negativity, and Tony, Tony loses the battle to hold back from Steve this last, essential piece of himself but this, it feels an awful lot like winning. He can’t find it in himself to doubt, to be cynical, to do anything but slide Steve’s foreskin up again and welcome Steve’s cock back into the humid heat of his mouth. 

He licks at it, sloppy and lust-stupid, purely because he can. Purely because he wants to. Purely because this is bliss. 

There’s a noise at the edge of Tony’s hearing, something like a muffled groan, and he forces himself to look up. Steve’s hand covers his own mouth like he’s trying to silence any stray sounds he might be making.

Gasping, Tony wrenches his mouth from Steve’s cock and pulls himself up, braces his hands against the bed next to Steve’s shoulders until he and Steve are eye to eye. “No.” He pries Steve’s hand away from where it rests over his mouth. “You don’t need to put on a show for me. You don’t have to moan or talk dirty if you don’t feel like it.” He presses his thumb gently into the thick of Steve’s palm. Kneads it. “But don’t hide.” His eyes shut and he shakes his head. “Not from me,” Tony pleads. When his eyes blink open a heartbeat later, Steve’s staring at him, wide-eyed, with those long lashes framing the blue shock of his eyes. “Any sounds you do make, anything you do say, I want to hear it. Please. Give it all to me.” _Give me everything you are._ “I’ll take care of—”

Steve interrupts Tony, lifting his head and seizing his lips in a desperate kiss. Tony runs his tongue over the sharp points of Steve’s teeth and right along his tongue, too. An urgent hand firm at the back of Tony’s neck and one trembling on his cheek, and all he can taste, all he can smell, all he can feel is Steve, Steve, Steve, everywhere, Steve…

Every breath is his name.

“Can you do that for me?” Tony says against Steve’s mouth, one hand reaching between their tangled bodies and squeezing Steve’s cock; touching him the way their past several weeks together exploring each others’ bodies have taught him Steve likes to be touched.  
  
“I can try.” Steve’s gratifyingly breathless, his chest heaving where it touches Tony’s. “For you.” The rawness of his voice goes straight to Tony’s cock.

Tony gentles the kiss by slow degrees until they are barely moving, lips still touching like they can’t bear to be apart—Tony can’t, he just can’t—but only breathing each others’ air. Even that small, simple act feels more intimate than everything he’s done with other partners. He pulls back just enough to see Steve’s eyes again. “No.” Firm and gentle. Lets his gaze sketch the bones of Steve’s face and the pink bloom in his cheeks that Tony himself put there, while his hand works Steve’s cock, setting a rhythm that has him bucking into Tony’s hand. A slow, slow smile tugs insistently at his lips, and he watches Steve watch him. “For you, sunshine.”

Steve’s breath hitches; Tony can hear it, so clearly. Then Steve makes a liquid sound that might be a laugh or might be a sob, but it doesn’t much matter which it is because Steve trusts him enough to make it right next to Tony’s ear, with his arms folded around Tony’s body, and it’s everything Tony could ask for from his fella.

“Lube, baby. Where’s the lube?” asks Tony, partially because he really doesn’t know where it is and partially to give them both a break from the intensity of feeling—to give them a moment to breathe. 

“In your ass, last I checked,” Steve quips, totally straight-faced. 

“Hardy har har,” Tony shoots back, scowling, “smartass.” With a low, feral growl, Tony nips at Steve’s throat, teeth and beard catching at his skin until Steve’s a squirming mass under him. “What am I gonna do with you?” he mutters against Steve’s skin.  
  
“Blow me, hopefully,” says Steve with a shrug, when Tony looks up.

“Mm. Yes,” Tony replies, and drops a kiss on Steve’s cheek. One, and then another, and another, because with Steve, he’s learning, a single kiss is never, ever enough to satisfy.

Steve fumbles around on the bed, eventually finds the bottle of lube, and passes it to Tony, who takes it with another kiss and a smile.

This time, when Tony slides down, his hands map Steve’s body in a slow, heavy caress over its elevations and valleys, across the warm skin that covers his rounded pecs, small, peaked nipples, and flat belly, and register the goosebumps that rise in response to his touch, or the cool air in Steve’s bedroom, or maybe simple anticipation. They aren’t a trick of Tony’s active imagination, though; they’re real. As real as the soft, pleasure-filled breaths that surface from Steve’s plush mouth, pushed out by the great, wide wall of Steve’s chest. 

This time, when Tony covers Steve’s cock with his mouth, Steve’s hands are curled tighter in Tony’s hair, his grip more urgent. More possessive. Tony doesn’t mind. It gives him a thrill. This is what he wants. This is what he asked for. When Tony does a visual check to make sure Steve isn’t covering his mouth with his pillow or something else in order to block his own sounds, all he sees past the hallowed ground of Steve’s torso are Steve’s parted, kiss-swollen lips and his brow furrowed sweetly in concentration. He’s a vision. Like something straight out of Tony’s hottest dreams—the ones that leave him hard, wet, aching with unfulfilled want for someone who doesn’t want him back. Except Steve’s real. And he wants Tony. This is real. All of it. 

The sight of Steve like this, caught in the spell of pleasure that Tony’s weaving around him, makes sweat bead at the small of Tony’s back.

“To—” Steve chokes out, his hips rising to meet Tony’s mouth. “Oh…”

He sounds so, so good. Wrecked, already. (Tony did that.) In answer, as a reward, Tony breathes through his nose and pulls Steve deeper into his throat. Gives a pleased hum around Steve’s cock. Like everything else on Steve, his cock is sizeable—and beautifully shaped. What doesn’t fit in his mouth Tony curls his hand tightly around, diligently jerking him off, the saliva that slips messily from the tight seal of his mouth easing his fingers’ swift glide. 

Every inch of Tony’s body burns. Tony’s racing mind quiets. Softens. Homes in on the sensation of Steve’s hardness taking up space in his mouth and his throat; Steve’s panting breaths and how they part the very air around them; the tension that quivers in his muscles beneath Tony’s touch. Steve wants this, and Tony does, too. He strokes the inside of Steve’s thigh, feeling the muscle shake, and it’s a heady sensation, knowing he’s making this powerful man tremble with nothing more and nothing less than his mouth and his hands. And that’s before Tony dips his fingers between Steve’s legs and gently rubs at the soft space behind his balls until Steve is breathing hard and tugging even harder at Tony’s hair. 

On the upstroke, as Tony’s other hand rolls from the base on up, Tony hollows his cheeks and sucks hard at the flared head of Steve’s cock. Listening for Steve’s reaction, his tongue he uses to lap and tease at the sensitive patch on the underside. A mess of sounds rain from Steve’s mouth: soft gasps, softer moans, a whitewater rush of words Tony can’t decipher but that feel unbearably good, and real, in Tony’s ears and against Tony’s skin. And always, always, Tony’s name serving to bind it all, uttered in Steve’s need-ravaged voice. Hearing it, Tony hums his approval around Steve’s hard length and rocks his hips forward and back, rubbing himself against the bed to relieve some of the pressure that’s building inside him as he sucks Steve’s cock and absorbs Steve’s responsiveness—the way he moans and writhes under Tony. 

Steve’s fingers loosen their grip and slide through Tony’s hair to rub affectionately at his ears before Tony says, “Mm-mm.” It comes out garbled because Tony’s trying to talk around Steve’s dick in his mouth, but he catches hold of Steve’s wandering fingers and moves them firmly back to his hair. His message seems to have been received since Steve leaves his fingers on Tony’s head and doesn’t try to move them again.

Tony backs off enough to take a deep breath and then wiggles both his hands under Steve, cradling the globes of his ass. When he sucks Steve’s cock into his mouth again, he redoubles his efforts, offering Steve the hot, wet suction of his mouth. He uses his grip on Steve’s ass as leverage to pull his hard length even deeper into his mouth and throat. Dampness trickles down his spine. Tony feels a split-second of discomfort at having Steve’s cock in his throat, at urging him to go as deep as he can go, but he forces himself to relax and breathe through his nose and then he’s fine. When he feels Steve stroking through his hair, tugging him closer, tears gather at the corners of Tony’s eyes. He moans, knowing Steve can feel the vibrations through his cock, and ruts against the bed as he lets Steve fuck his mouth. 

“So good— _ah_ —sweetheart. So sweet for me,” Steve says.  
  
That’s what finally does it; a few words of praise in Steve’s panting, wrecked voice send the tears spilling hot over Tony’s cheeks while he works Steve’s cock faster and faster with his mouth and slides his tongue against it. Without taking his mouth off Steve, Tony feels around for the bottle of lube. He flicks the cap with his thumb, and the bottle opens with a _snick._ Lust makes him clumsy, so Tony spills far too much slick into his hand, but when he nudges his wet middle finger against Steve’s rim, just teasing at the outside, Steve doesn’t seem to mind. 

Steve’s close—perched on the precipice. He doubts it’ll take much to get him to tumble. Tony can tell by the way he trembles, by the increase in the speed of his breath. He can feel the tautness in Steve’s body; he sucks harder, hot and dizzy with want. The blood pounds in his body and his hips never stop moving as he rubs off against the bed. Elegant? No. Necessary? Yes. 

All he wants is to make it good for Steve. Lightheaded and fuzzy at the edges, Tony swallows around Steve’s cock, certain that he’ll feel the undulation, and lets the sound of Steve’s resulting groan wash over him. The world, finally, spirals down—narrows to this pinprick focus: Steve in his mouth; the aria of Steve’s strained, panting breaths; Steve’s fingers moving through his hair, anchored there like they’ll never let him go; the slow-honey drizzle in Tony’s head. Pleasure, heat, want coil in Tony’s balls, at the base of his spine, tight as the tension in a rubber band that’s been stretched almost to its limit. Tony’s pulse thuds a rapid tattoo, scalding in his shaking hands, in his chest, in his head. Everywhere.

Just...a little...more...

“Hngg.” Steve’s hands tighten in Tony’s hair as his hips piston. “Tony.” Steve’s voice as if from a great distance. Husky. Parched. Like a man who hasn’t had water in days. “Tony, please. I can’t...” Hands on Tony’s shoulders, stroking, rubbing restlessly at his hot skin.

He knows what to do. 

Sliding up, he lets his mouth suckle at just the head of Steve’s cock while one of his hands forms a tight channel around the rest of it. The slick-covered middle finger of his other hand he presses into Steve’s hole. Shallow. Not deep, but it doesn’t need to be. Steve’s reaction is instantaneous: as Tony breaches him, Steve throws back his head, lets loose what can only be described as a wail, and thrusts up into Tony’s mouth. Shuddering over and over, he fills Tony’s mouth with salt and bitter that Tony swallows, gladly. Tony’s tongue darts out and flickers over his lips to taste the overflow.                                                                                                        

While Steve’s body is still spasming, Tony pulls off Steve’s cock but remains close, propped on one arm with his eyes trained on Steve’s face, on his slack, pink mouth, and pleasure-pinched brows. It feels like every pulse of Steve’s cock is synchronized with Tony’s heartbeat. Warmth splashes Tony’s cheek, catches the hair on his chin. With his finger still tucked inside Steve, he feels the clutch and release of Steve’s body as it tries to coax him in deeper. 

With a jolt that zings right out to his fingertips, that makes Tony suck in a deep, shuddering breath through a mouth gone dry, their gazes connect. Tony couldn’t look away even if he wanted to, and Steve’s hand moves from Tony’s shoulder to his chest, long fingers walking the path of his reactor scars. 

For the whisper of time that exists between when a match head kisses a striker and when it ignites, Tony experiences absolute stillness. No fear; no judgment; no prophecy; no yesterday; no tomorrow. Then the rubber band snaps; the heat that’s built in him crescendos into a supernova, and he spills across the bed, hips jerking. 

Steve’s name breaks from his lips, spun glass dropped from a great height, shattered into tessellated light on impact.

Tony’s still breathing through it when he feels himself being lifted and moved around on the bed. He could protest; could move his own body—if his limbs would only cooperate. Instead, he stays limp, eyes shut, and allows Steve to do whatever it is he’s doing.  When the movement finally stills, Tony surfaces to Steve’s warmth stacked up behind him. He can feel the faint brush of hair where the fronts of Steve’s thighs are pressed to the backs of his. They’re lying on their sides, and Tony never wants to move again. 

Wriggling a bit to settle himself more firmly against Steve, Tony says—or rather mumbles into the pillow squashed under his cheek, “You moved your hands. You weren’t supposed to do that, naughty boy.”

“Sorry,” Steve says in a soft, fucked-out rumble, and damned if that isn’t sexy as all hell. His breath soughs against Tony’s hair and warms his ear, tricking a long shiver down his spine. “I didn’t know what I was doing at the end there. No control. Your fault, though.”

“My fault?” Tony knows he’s fishing, but he doesn’t care.

“Mm. Your mouth—’s too good. _You’re_ too good.” Steve’s hold on Tony tightens a fraction. “Thank you...for taking care of me like that.”

The words fall sweet and warm in Tony’s ear. He relaxes into them, opening his eyes and letting himself smile a tiny smile. “You’re welcome. Anytime, _tesoro mio_.” 

“What’s that?”

“Hmm?”

“What did you just say?”

“Oh, that,” says Tony, reaching behind him to dust his fingers against Steve’s leg. “It’s nothing.”

Long, warm fingers chase across his reactor and flick his nipple. Tony squeaks and shudders, still very sensitive post-orgasm.  
  
“You’re lying,” Steve says, lips buried against the back of Tony’s neck. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll get it out of you eventually.” 

“I plead the fifth,” is all Tony says in reply, voice prim.

Steve rocks gently behind him, his softening cock rubbing against Tony’s ass. Tony arches his back involuntarily, and Steve laughs quietly, a soft, shivery sound like a breeze through spring-green leaves. Tony feels it everywhere. Steve’s mouth rubs along Tony’s shoulder; nips at his skin. “I have ways of you getting you to talk.”

“Why, Captain, how very devious of you.”

The arm that Steve has curled over Tony urges him a little closer. “You have no idea,” Steve replies, his voice laugh-warm. That’s how Steve should always sound. His fingers tiptoe over the mess on Tony’s cheek that’s already gone a bit tacky, and trail through his beard. “How do you feel about a shower and a change of sheets?” Unbelievable. His voice is still doing that rumbly thing that makes Tony want to stretch and rub himself all over Steve.

“Nope Not yet. Maybe in a few minutes.” Tony’s too warm and too comfortable and just too plain happy where and how he is right now to even contemplate moving.  
  
“We’re lying in your wet spot right now, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Excuse you, I didn’t make that wet spot all by myself,” Tony says, brimming with mock indignation.

“Fair enough,” Steve says in response to his grumbling, “but you did make a lot of it. Not that I’m complaining.”  
  
“Sorry, I’ll buy you ten new sets of sheets.”

“Shh. No, you won’t. Don’t be ridiculous. I said I’m not complaining. Not about one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen.”

“Top ten?” Tony asks, perking up, and he’s fishing again, and really, he doesn’t care. Again. He’s already wearing Steve’s come on his face; pfft, who needs dignity, anyway?

“Oh, definitely top twenty.” Steve catches Tony’s ear lobe between his teeth; huffs a laugh when Tony swats him half-heartedly and mutters something about ungrateful blue-eyed supersoldiers from Brooklyn.

Steve reaches down and pulls the sheet over them both, then snuggles up behind Tony again and takes possession of one of his hands. As much pleasure and raw feeling as they’re able to draw from every part of Tony’s body, if someone were to ask Tony where he most liked Steve’s hands, this is how he’d answer: holding his own. Probably not what the tabloids would expect of Tony Stark, but his image, ultimately, consists of a great deal of smoke, mirrors, and sleight of hand. No one who knows Tony well―and there are so few of those, aren’t there?―would be surprised by Tony’s answer. 

They both fall quiet, he and Steve do, but it’s not uncomfortable or strained. It’s the kind of silence that spreads and comforts like the heat that emanates from a fireplace in winter. Tony can’t say exactly how long the silence unwinds around them, but he can tell from Steve’s breathing and the telltale, almost metronomic stroke of Steve’s fingers against his that he isn’t asleep. 

Unsurprisingly, Tony’s the first one to part the curtain of silence that’s settled around them in the waning afternoon light. He thinks back to Steve’s hand and the minuscule freckle dotted on his index finger. Wonders again how long it’s been there. Wonders what else he doesn’t know about the man holding his hand―and his heart. “Tell me something,” he says into the stillness, then brings Steve’s hand to his mouth and kisses it. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.” 

He can feel it, the tension that enters Steve’s body. The tightness. Immediately, Tony kicks himself for saying the wrong thing. For being selfish and pushing when he shouldn’t. He’s misjudged― It’s just, it’s just that he feels safe and content, and he hopes maybe Steve feels like that, too, but this is probably another terrible miscalculation on his part. Steve doesn’t pull away though; his fingers tighten where they’re still wound around Tony’s, snipping the snarled thread of Tony’s steamrolling thoughts.  

“I like how you fit against me,” Steve says, low and hushed, like he’s making a confession. Maybe he is. 

“Me, too.” Temptation sneaks up on Tony, an itch he knows damn well he shouldn’t scratch. He wants to turn around in Steve’s arms and examine his face, to see if he can decrypt whatever’s there, but Tony smothers his curiosity, stays put, and simply listens. 

“I like how my arms don't feel empty anymore.”

The moment seems...fragile. What’s happening between them feels good, but it occurs to Tony that it’s like a bubble—shimmering and translucent, but let it get caught in a strong gust of wind or poke it with a careless finger and _pop_ , there it goes: no more bubble. 

Hoping Steve takes it for the encouragement he intends it to be, Tony takes their joined hands and moves them so they rest over his arc reactor. “I’m glad,” he says. The other hand he reaches up and back and squeezes Steve’s biceps.

“They used to,” Steve continues. “I, um, I,” he says, his speech so slow and halting that it’s painfully obvious to Tony how difficult it is for him to even get the words out. His words cease, but his breathing picks up, and he trembles against Tony. It’s slight—hardly anything dramatic—but undeniably present in his muscles, and while Tony’s been thinking it would be easier for Steve to talk to him without them looking at each other, he can no longer restrain himself from turning around. 

Tony’s not one of those lucky people who always know the right thing to say. Sure, he can talk his ass off; that’s not the same as having a master key that will unlock every awkward conversational moment. But the expression Steve’s wearing right now—forlorn and confused—makes Tony want to try. “It’s okay,” he says, running his pointer finger down the slope of Steve’s nose, “it was just a thought. A dumb one. You don’t—”  
  
“Not dumb. I want to. I just…” Steve’s voice fades and he hunches forward, his gaze sliding away from Tony’s.  
  
“It’s not fair, I guess, to ask you to tell me something you’ve never told anyone before without doing the same thing.”

“Tony, that’s not. You don’t have to—”  
  
“Hush,” Tony says, and leans in to kiss Steve quiet, hands resting light at his cheeks. The decision isn’t an easy one to make, but Steve’s gaze lingers so gently on his when Tony pulls back that he makes it anyway. “I went to MIT when I was 15. I build things—bots, planes, weapons…” He glances away from Steve, staring, instead, at his bookshelf, while he pauses and clears his throat. “I could talk your ear off about novel spin-orbit physics. But you know,”—Tony tilts his head to the side and clicks his tongue—“there’s one thing I never figured out.” A laugh bubbles out of him, but it tastes acrid. “Believe me, I tried.”

“What’s that?” Steve asks.

He can’t say this with Steve’s full focus so visibly on him. He wishes he could, but it’s too unnerving; closing his eyes, Tony hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder. “How to get my dad to love me.”  
  
At first, Steve doesn’t do much of anything in response but cup the back of Tony’s head with his hand and stroke slowly over the small of his back. Steve’s warm and solid against him and honestly, it’s kind of enough. Tony doesn’t want to hear any platitudes about how every parent loves their kids, no matter what they do, yadda yadda yadda. “It’s tough for me to imagine anyone not loving you,” says Steve, “especially your own dad. Not that I knew Howard that well.” 

“Probably better than I did, but hey, what’re you gonna do?” Tony quips. He laughs, hollow and false, and it sounds like a car crash, wheels spinning crazily, metal rending, and glass shattering. _Sonofabitch_ , Tony thinks. His throat thickens and his eyes burn, and he’s not doing this— “Nope, hey, Cap,” Tony says, already moving away. “We’re not talking about this. I’m done. Kaput. Said all I’m gonna say, and I think I’m ready for that shower now.”

“Wait, Tony.”

He’s not going to do it—he’s not going to look at Steve’s face. Doesn’t want to see the pity or horror or whatever the fuck is there. In his haste to get away, Tony gets tangled up in the sheets and basically tumbles off the bed. Nothing really hurts much except his ego, but Steve’s in front of him in a second, hand outstretched. 

“You okay?” Steve asks. The concern in his voice makes Tony’s bruised ego smart.

Tony stares at Steve’s hand. His gaze stalls there—doesn’t travel any higher—and he calculates the possibilities. He could ignore Steve’s hand and make a run for the bathroom. Could barricade himself in there and wait until Steve gets tired of waiting and leaves his own room. He could scramble for his clothes, wherever they are at this point, put them on and then be the one to leave first. He could run out naked, which let’s be honest, he’s done much worse. Or he could...He could…

Tony takes Steve’s hand and lets him pull him to his feet.

He doesn’t look at his face.

 

Steve rubs shampoo into Tony’s hair. He’s meticulous about it, too, seeming to leave no strand untouched, no section of his scalp unwashed. The feel of Steve’s hands caressing his head is hypnotic. Between Steve’s touch and the warm, drumming rush of the water, Tony slips into a soporific, lulled state.

It’s not until Steve’s fingers curl ‘round Tony’s shoulders and exert the slightest bit of pressure, urging him to turn, that he speaks. “When I came out of the ice, I hated it here.” He nudges Tony’s chin; tilts his head back under the warm spray to rinse out the shampoo. “The food, the sounds, the streets I used to walk— Everything was unfamiliar. I just...I just wanted to go home, even though there was no way to do that.” Steve’s palm wipes the hair away from Tony’s forehead. Lingers there. “I was so tired, but I couldn’t sleep. No one would touch me. Except for the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors jabbing me with their needles all the time. And except for in battle. But getting kicked in the gut isn’t the same as a...It’s not the same as a....”

Tony opens his eyes and finally blinks up at the man who’s patiently soaped all his nooks and all his crannies with his wide-palmed, careful hands and thus far hasn’t flinched away from any of his dirt. “As a hug?” he finishes for Steve.

Steve’s brow crinkles. “Yes.”

“You were lonely.” With two fingers, Tony traces the path a single droplet takes from the shadowed space beneath Steve’s eye, over his cheek and jaw, down his throat.

“I…” Steve’s throat works on a long, heavy swallow. “Yeah, guess l was.” His jaw clenches as the water falls around them in a damp cocoon. “I thought about it sometimes—how I might do it. How to make it so I wasn’t here anymore. I wanted so badly to not exist, but I didn’t do it because I got scared thinking—” Though Steve’s eyes are open, his gaze seems turned inward, far from where Tony can reach. “Because of the serum, I didn’t know what would work and...”

In spite of the warm water cascading over them both, ice encases Tony. Inside, where the heat from the water can’t touch it. It crackles through his veins, freezing Tony while he continues to stare at Steve with a growing sense of horror—and understanding. “Steve”—as Tony crowds closer, feet bumping Steve’s, he tips his head back to look up at him, and his hand shoots out and catches Steve’s jaw—“what are you saying?”

Under his focused, searching gaze, Steve’s face twists with something ugly—something Tony recognizes immediately because he’s seen it in the mirror many, many times: shame and self-loathing.  

Steve’s not supposed to look like that. Not ever.

Steve blinks, his water-spiked lashes framing the pain that flares deep in the blue of his eyes. “You know what I’m saying, Tony.”

“You wanted to die?” He gapes at Steve. “ _You_?” Raw with disbelief. With pain, too.

“I’m only a man, Tony.” Steve’s shoulders curl in, and he retreats a step from Tony, mouth pinched in a stark line. Oh, no. The expression on his face, like he’s just swallowed a handful of broken glass, makes Tony want to punch himself in the face.

“No, sweetness,” Tony says, shaking his head, “don’t do that.” He’s doing this all wrong—saying the wrong things and driving Steve away. With horrible clarity, he can see the end of them before they’ve really even begun. He takes one step forward. Then two. Going up on his toes, he reaches for Steve; throws his arms around his neck and pulls until Steve acquiesces, leans down, and goes where Tony’s trying to lead him. He doesn’t continue speaking until their foreheads are pressed together. “Of course you’re only human. You’re allowed to struggle. Are you…?” His hands curl around Steve’s cheeks. “Do you still…?” He fumbles the words and nearly screams in frustration. “Do you feel like that now?” Tony finally manages to get out. 

“No. It’s been...at least a year and a half since I’ve thought about anything like that.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s good.” Tony rubs his thumbs over Steve’s face in a slow caress. “But if it comes back… If you start to feel like that again, tell me. Steve, you have to tell me.” His hands drop to Steve’s shoulders, and he gives him a small shake. 

“I'm fine, and I don’t want your pity,” says Steve, and draws back enough that Tony catches the telltale tightness in his stupidly handsome jawline, and the strain carved around his eyes. “So if that’s what this is, maybe you should just go.”

It’s such a shockingly dumb thing to say that Tony just blinks back at Steve for a good thirty seconds, eyeing his pink cheeks and his blue eyes and fuck it; fuck him; fuck _them_ , he lo— “Damn it, Steve, that’s not what this is. Don’t be an idiot.” Has he not understood anything that Tony’s said today? Or worse, does he just not believe him? At that thought, Tony rubs at his chest. Exhaling sharply through his nose, he attempts to rein in his panic and frustration before he makes things any worse. Jerking around, he switches off the shower. After opening the shower stall door, he snatches up one of the towels Steve hung from the bar and pats at Steve’s wet hair. “This isn’t just sex for me,” he says while wiping the water off Steve’s chest. “We talked about this. I want more.” Earlier, he’d thought about how badly he just wants to _know_ Steve. Well, this is part of Steve. It’s not the total of who Steve is, not by a long shot, but it’s part of him. “Do you not believe that I care about you?”

There’s a tumult of other thoughts and words clashing in Tony, but as hard as it is to wait, he holds his tongue and gives Steve space to think; too much hinges on his answer. 

“I believe you.” Steve’s eyes are soft as he brushes Tony’s wet hair out of his face. “I just… It’s…” He heaves a deep sigh, one hand opening and then closing, his gaze tipped toward something else in the bathroom. “Captain America isn’t supposed to be so weak.”

“Listen to me,” says Tony, and he pauses until Steve’s gaze shifts back to him, “the world might want Captain America. Me? I want _you_ , Steve. _You_.” By this time he’s crouched on the shower floor and drying off Steve’s thighs, and he’s regained control of himself. “I will tell you that—every day—until you beg me not to say it ever again. And you know me; I am annoying and stubborn enough to do it, too.”

The tiniest smile flickers over Steve’s mouth, but the warmth it releases through Tony, melting the ice, is well out of proportion to its size. “You don’t need to do that. I believe you,” says Steve.

“Well, that’s good. Really, really good.” Tony smiles back, beyond relieved, and stands and hands the towel to Steve, who wraps it around his waist. Shower floor? Not the most comfortable place. Stepping out of the shower, Tony grabs a second towel, this one for himself, and scrubs at his hair. “It’s like you said”—he turns and looks at Steve over his shoulder—“you’re only a man.” Steve steps out after Tony, takes the towel right out of his hands, and starts drying him off. “You know, I can do that myself.”

Steve’s eyebrow slants up. “So can I,” he says drily. 

“Touché,” Tony replies, and it finally feels safe to let his lips slide into a smirk. 

“Come on,” Steve says after tucking the loose end of Tony’s towel around his waist, “let’s finish this conversation somewhere besides the bathroom.”

“Hear, hear.” Tony trails after Steve back into his bedroom. “I know I didn’t walk in here naked, but I don’t know where my clothes are.”

“Right there on the floor,” Steve replies, pointing over his shoulder.

“Hmm. Yeah, thanks. But um, they’re probably all dusty, and…”

Steve’s lips twitch suspiciously. “I could loan you something.”

“Oh, yeah, well, if you’re offering,” Tony says with studied innocence.

Steve shuffles through his closet, rattling hangers. “Heads up,” he says and then tosses some things to Tony. 

Shaking them out one by one, Tony frowns. “You forgot underwear.”

“Didn’t forget.” Steve shakes his head, damp hair falling into his face, and lets the band of his own fresh pair of briefs snap against his waist. “It’s laundry day.” While his delivery’s totally straight, his eyebrows are doing some weird, twitchy thing. 

“All right, commando it is,” Tony says, shrugging. With a snort of disbelief, Tony tugs over his head the unassuming blue tee Steve tossed at him. As Tony finishes pulling Steve’s grey sweats up his legs, he looks across the room at Steve, who’s wearing a black t-shirt now and just staring intently at him with an odd look on his face. “What?” Tony asks, tightening the drawstring on the sweats; the pants are too loose and too long, puddling around his ankles. “Do I have something on my face?” He shifts uncomfortably on his feet and pats his hands over his cheeks, feeling extremely self-conscious.

The sound of Steve’s throat clearing. “No, it’s definitely not that.”

“So what is it?” Tony asks, not aggressively, but with just a little sharpness. 

“You uh…” Steve wipes a hand over his mouth, and his gaze moves away from Tony before sliding back quickly. He waves a hand vaguely in Tony’s direction, and is that a—? 

Is Steve blushing?       

He’s definitely blushing. Perfectly. Prettily. Adorably. Why is he blushing? Oh. _Oh._

Now that he understands what’s going on, Tony’s discomfort vanishes, so he saunters toward Steve. 

“You uh, look good. In my clothes,” Steve says when Tony’s a couple inches away.

Tony slants a glance up at Steve, trying not to smile as he plucks at a pant leg. “You don’t think they’re too big on me? Maybe I should just change back into my clothes.” He reaches for the hem of the t-shirt he’s wearing like he’s about to take it off, but immediately, Steve’s hands arrest his. 

“No.” Steve shakes his head vehemently. “Keep them on; they’re not too big. Okay, they are—but they’re still perfect.”

Tony can’t hold back his smile any longer. “Yeah? Perfect?”

“Perfect,” Steve confirms. “I didn’t know... I didn’t know I’d like it so much, how you look wearing my clothes.” With his eyes so trusting and soft that it makes something in Tony’s chest twist, Steve strokes over Tony’s wrist with his thumb. “Don’t change,” he says, “please.”  

“I won’t,” Tony promises, rising on his toes to kiss Steve’s cheek. He doesn’t pull away after; simply folds Steve in his arms and sinks into the feel of Steve breathing quietly and easily against him. “So, I know we’re kind of having a moment”—Tony rubs his cheek against Steve’s shirt-covered chest—“and I don’t want to be the one to ruin it, but I’m going to hate myself even more if I don’t say this.”

Steve’s arms tighten where they rest curved low around his back. “It’s okay, Tony. Say what you need to say.”

“It’s not just what I need to say, Steve. I think you need to hear it, too.” Tony steps back from Steve and walks over to the bed, where he sits on the long edge. He pats the empty space beside him; Steve nods and joins him. The outside of his bare thigh presses right against Tony’s leg, and that gives Tony the strength to continue. “If a friend told you— If _I_ told you I’d thought about killing myself, would you tell me I’m weak?”

“No, of course not,” Steve replies without any visible hesitation.

“Why not?”  
  
“That’s easy.” Steve shrugs and taps his foot on the floor, making the bed bounce a little. “Because I know you. You’re not weak. You’re one of the strongest people I know.  One of the kindest. Sometimes life is just hard.”

If Steve and his smile and his integrity and his lionheart and his everything hadn’t already burrowed under Tony’s skin and turned into something Tony knew he didn’t want to be without, he would realize it then. Straightening his shoulders, Tony turns his head and takes in Steve’s strong, proud profile. “Exactly. Sometimes life is just hard. And if you can extend that kind of understanding to me or to another friend, maybe you should extend it to yourself, too.”

Steve’s head dips, and he clasps his fingers together loosely. He doesn’t appear to have checked out of the conversation, though; Tony thinks he’s listening. 

Tony sighs, and moistens his lips before he goes on. “It’s not weak to consider suicide. Just human. I’ve been there—”

Steve looks directly at Tony, frowning. “You have?”

“I’m not proud of it, but yeah, I have. Why? Does that change how you think of me—make you want to take back anything you said or did with me?”  
  
“Not all, Tony. It doesn’t change anything about how I feel about you or what I want with you. It just…” Steve’s face seems to crumple in on itself, and Steve’s hand falls on Tony’s knee. “It hurts to think of you feeling that way.”

“It’s no different for me.” Tony drops his hand on top of Steve’s and squeezes. “It hurts me to think of you wanting to die. But I do get it; I’ve been there. And I don’t judge you for it. After my parents died… You’ve gotta trust me on this. Look, I won’t pretend to know exactly how you felt because it’s different for every person, but I do know what it’s like to hurt. To be so tired that you just want to find a way to make the pain stop. You were lonely and depressed.” He pauses and inhales a shuddering breath. Glances down at their hands. “I’m sorry that I didn’t see how bad off you were. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you when you were screaming for someone to care; to give a shit and try to help you.”

“Thank you. But it wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t your responsibility.”

“But you needed someone and you didn’t have anyone and I should have known and I hate it—I hate that I didn’t know.”  
  
“How, Tony? How were you supposed to know?”  
  
“I don’t know. But I should have.”

“No, Tony. I won’t let you do this to yourself.” Breathing hard, Steve touches Tony’s jaw and turns his face so they’re staring right at each other. “The only way you could have known was if I told you,” he says, low and intent.  
  
Tony shakes his head. “But—”

“No. The only way.”

When Steve’s arm goes around Tony’s shoulders, Tony turns into it, tucking his face against Steve’s neck. “Then if it happens again, if you get those urges again, please tell me. Tell somebody. Tell everybody.”

“I’m fine now. I really am.”

“I believe you. But if you’re ever _not_ fine, tell me.”

“Okay.” Soft as a breath.

“I couldn’t hear you, Steve.”

“I’ll tell you. I will.”

“Thank you,” says Tony, relaxing his iron grip on Steve’s shirt.

“Thank you for caring enough about me to want to know.”

“I want to know everything about you, sunshine.”  
  
“Everything?”

Steve’s lips find Tony’s and move over them gently. Just as Tony nibbles daringly at Steve’s bottom lip, someone’s stomach grumbles. Loudly. Steve’s stomach. Tony stifles a laugh against Steve’s mouth and says, “Wanna order some pizza?”  
  
“With pineapple? 

With a gasp, Tony rears back, a hand placed dramatically at his throat. “Pineapple? Take it back. That is not a pizza topping.”

“Sure it is.” Steve grins, broad and twinkly-eyed, and damned if Tony’s stomach doesn’t just go _swoop_. “And I love it.” 

“Ugh. Gross.” Tony makes a disgusted face. “Heathen. Better make it two pizzas, then.” Crossing his eyes, Tony pretends to put a finger down his throat. 

Steve shoots Tony an arch look, eyes dancing. “See? Guess you don’t really want to know everything about me after all.”

Humming noncommittally, Tony doesn’t protest; just lets Steve haul him close again with an arm around his waist and a hand tucked sweetly into his hair. He waits until Steve’s eyes close and his head dips in, presumably for a kiss. “Blech. Pineapple. You’re lucky I adore you,” Tony mutters with faux irritation.

“What was that?” Steve asks, eyes still shut and one hand cupped against his own ear. “I couldn’t hear you.”  
  
“What’s the matter, Rogers? You going deaf in your dotage?” Tony deliberately says too loudly.  
  
“Say it again.”  
  
Tony grins. “You going deaf in your dotage?”

“No, not that. Come on, be nice,” Steve says, with an admittedly adorable pout. “The other thing.”

Faced with this ridiculous man and his ridiculous face and his ridiculous heart, what can Tony possibly do but relent? 

“I adore you, Cap.”

“Again. But this time without the _Cap_.”

“I adore you, sunshine.”

“It’s mutual, sweetheart.”

 

* * *

* _Tesoro mio_ means "my treasure" or "treasure mine" in Italian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're having thoughts of suicide, please seek help. I'm sorry I don't have international phone numbers, but if you're in the U.S., please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
> 
> Thank you for reading. If you have a moment to leave kudos and a comment, I'd be grateful for hearing your thoughts. As of now, this story is complete, but a part of me is tempted to add more in this 'verse. Should you have things you're curious to see, let me know. No guarantees, but you never know. :)
> 
> This fic is basically an homage to this song: flor's ["warm blood."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7C04ZgG154) I wanted the story to be dense, immersive, and sensual. No idea if I even came close to hitting the mark, but that's what I was after, anyway. 
> 
> It's nothing fancy, but I have a [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/spal1977/playlist/7igNdA7uXHPz7ecjH9agsA?si=6MFB-nFGSYq57-ba456lww) of songs that I listened to for this story.
> 
> You can also find me at [onlymorelove.tumblr.com](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com), where I post GIF sets, ramble, etc.; come talk to me if you like. I do not bite. :) I reblog other people's stuff at [onlymoreloverebagels.tumblr.com](http://onlymoreloverebagels.tumblr.com).

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve enjoyed any part of this story, please consider reblogging [this post on tumblr](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/post/186406062728/hes-a-candle-burning-in-my-room-complete). That will help more people find it. Thanks for considering it.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading; feedback, kudos, etc. are always welcome. Also, I can't decide if this is finished or not. I'm waffling between leaving it as a one-shot or adding one more part. Any thoughts? I'd love to hear them. 
> 
> You can also find me at [tumblr](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com). :) I’ve a Stony playlist on Spotify here. Send me some song suggestions if you like.
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

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